Love Opens Many Doors
by rewind gone nuts
Summary: A chance encounter changes everything. When Ranma carries Nabiki away from the wrath of Ukyo and Shampoo in the wake of their new engagement, he inadvertently leads them all through a door that wasn't there yesterday - and isn't there when they look back! Now stranded in a City of Doors, the four reluctant allies must work together to overcome all obstacles to a path home.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Notes:** Ranma 1/2. Dungeons & Dragons. These are two of my oldest interests, and being aware of a well-written but sadly abandoned "Ranma in Planescape" fic here on FFN, which is held in my favorites, I felt that it was fair game for me to try my own stab at crossing over my favorite media, since I am now trying to get back into the fic-writing game.

* * *

_**Chapter 1: Fateful First Step! Lost in the City of Doors!**_

* * *

In hindsight, they would agree on just how unlikely it was. Just how implausible the precise combination of events needed to come together in just that specific manner had been. If Ukyo had been skipping class for whatever reason, or if Shampoo hadn't been near enough to Furinkan that she decided it was worth sneaking onto the grounds to visit Ranma, things probably wouldn't have happened the way they did.

But at the time, they had no idea of the strange fate that they were about to pursue...

* * *

"Are you crazy, Nabiki?!" Ranma thundered at the top of his lungs.

These past day or so had been... Ranma couldn't even decide. Confusing? Annoying? Topsy-turvy? First, Akane had decided to call off the engagement, and all over some stupid little things that hadn't even been his fault! Secondly, she and Nabiki had just up and decided out of nowhere that he was going to marry Nabiki instead.

That would have been hard enough to wrap his head around, but she had just kept blindsiding him. Earlier that morning, she'd been all over him, acting more affectionate and sweet-hearted than he'd ever seen her before... it was like somebody had rolled Shampoo and Ukyo and maybe even a little of Kodachi all into one and then shoved them into a Nabiki suit!

Earlier, she'd pressed him about whether or not he minded that she was older than he was, causing Ranma to blurt out that he didn't care about stupid stuff like that. And then, just now, he'd caught her selling off pictures of his girl-form to the hornball losers here at Furinkan!

It's not that Ranma really cared so much about Akane breaking off the engagement... well, okay, truth be told, it actually bugged him a **lot **more than he'd ever admit to himself, never mind to anyone else, but the hypocrisy of Akane treating him like the bad guy responsible for this whole mess was something of an anaesthetic for the distress.

And whilst he might not be a raging lech like Kuno, he wasn't made of stone either - only an idiot would fail to notice that Nabiki was actually pretty attractive. But that didn't mean he'd fallen off the turnip truck, either! He had _no _intention of letting any girl pull the "bat my eyelashes and jerk a boy around" routine on **him**!

"But they've been selling so well!" Nabiki protested 'innocently', as if that really justified what she'd been doing.

Ranma sucked in a deep breath, about ready to let Nabiki know _**exactly **_what he thought of that little argument, when he was distracted by a sudden clamour coming from behind him.

Looking over his shoulder, his eyes widened in surprise as he saw a crowd of dozens of Furinkan students, both boys and girls, jogging eagerly over to where he was confronting his erstwhile fiancée.

Nabiki simply smiled and waved at the approaching mob. "Over here! Form a line on the right!"

Ranma stared dumbfounded as the newcomers began shoving and pushing each other around, simultaneously trying to do what Nabiki had said and fighting to be first in line... well, in so far as the other Furinkan students actually 'fought'. Ranma had a rather different definition of the term to them. Just what the hell was going on here?

"Ranma-honey!"

Ranma blinked as a familiar voice reached his ears. "Ucchan?" he asked instinctively, twisting around to catch sight of his crossdressing fiancée as she bounded over to meet him.

"I've been looking for you everywhere, Ranchan!" she said, gaze fixed fast on him. "What's this-"

"Nihao, Airen!"

This time, both Ukyo and Nabiki joined Ranma in starting as Shampoo suddenly came zipping across the ground on her bicycle. It was a rare thing indeed when the Joketsuzoku strayed onto Furinkan High; for whatever reason, she seemed to view the school as "off limits" and instead focused on trying to run into Ranma in the streets or at the Tendo Dojo. Oblivious, or at least indifferent, to the confusion and simmering hostility she was being greeted with, Shampoo pulled her bike to a halt right in front of Ranma and Nabiki.

"Is too-too good to see Airen today!" she chirped, beaming happily at the reluctant focus of her affections. Then she seemed to take in the tableau she'd pulled up in front of, blinking in visible confusion as she looked over the three teens. "Um... what you doing?" she asked.

Ukyo shook her head, turning away from her rival to instead thrust an accusatory index finger at Ranma and Nabiki. "As I was saying; what's this I hear about you breaking up with Akane-"

"Is true?! Oh, such happy news!" Shampoo squealed in her excitement, clapping her hands together and actually bouncing on the spot in jubilation. She remained, as always, indifferent to the appreciative leers from the male audience watching her bobbing up and down, a sight that made a strange tick of irritation prickle across Ranma's skin.

"And getting engaged to Nabiki?!" Ukyo continued, doing her best to ignore Shampoo's interruptions.

"Wait, what?!" Shampoo blurted, eyes going so wide with shock that Ranma almost thought they were going to pop out of her head. "No, is not true, Airen? Why you want be with girl like Nabiki when you could be with Shampoo?" she asked in genuine confusion, complete with a catlike tilt of her head.

"And what's wrong with a girl like me?" Nabiki asked acidly, just the faintest hint of wounded pride adding an icy sharpness to her otherwise softly questioning words.

"I - It's not! That is!" Ranma stumbled over his words, privately cursing to himself; why was it that he could be so slick when he wanted to trick opponents, but when he needed that same clever tongue to get out of being pummeled by angry fiancées, he babbled like Ryoga?!

"Hey, you line-cutters! If you want to rent Ranma, fine, but wait your turn!" called out one of the students who were watching this little impromptu show with less than patient grace.

"Rent?" Ukyo repeated flatly, looking at the speaker inquisitively.

"Yeah - didn't you see the flyers? Since Nabiki's Ranma's new fiancée, that means she gets to control where he spends his time. So she's selling him off to anyone who can afford him, for whatever they want to do with him."

"She's what?!" Ukyo gasped in horror, brain frozen at the concept.

"You're what?!" Ranma roared, whirling on Nabiki as she put on a distinctly nervous grin and tried to make placating gestures with her hands... only for Ranma to then flinch away instinctively as he suddenly felt an outpouring of battle aura, hotter and fiercer than anything he'd felt in a good while!

"Nabiki... selling... airen?" Shampoo asked, her voice distant and eyes seeming to stare not into Nabiki, but through her. All three other members of the Ranma Saotome love dodecahedron watched in concern as her face subtly shifted, muscles twitching as Shampoo's usual cheery expression slowly warped into something darker, something burning with hatred. "Like _**slave?!**_" she snarled, making Ranma's hair stand on end; he'd heard Shampoo be mad before, but this? This was on a whole new level.

"I wouldn't put it like that..." Nabiki weakly attempted to defend herself.

"Nabiki..." Shampoo sighed softly, closing her eyes... only for them to snap open, almost literally glowing in fury! "You I _**KILL!**_" the Joketsuzoku warrior screamed, face contorted into a veritable hannya war-mask of fury.

Nabiki was not a fighter. She at most knew how to exercise to keep herself fit. But her father had taught her the basics, long ago, and some instincts never quite went away... especially when they had the adrenaline rush of certain death giving them an emergency power boost. So it was that, miraculously, she managed to jump out of the way with a scream of fright as Shampoo's sword suddenly cleaved the air where she had been standing!

Unfortunately, that left the middle Tendo daughter sprawled on the ground, crying out as Shampoo's sword suddenly scythed down towards her neck like a razor-edged meteor... only to be intercepted at the last moment by Ukyo's trademark battle spatula, the clash of steel on steel echoing across Furinkan.

"Shampoo, have you gone nuts?!" Ukyo yelled, visibly straining to hold Shampoo back... and not doing as well as she'd hoped she would. Her arms wobbled with the strain of holding back the blade, and she could feel herself actually sinking an inch into the ground as the enraged Chinese Amazon bore down on her.

"Wo xi ni! Wo xi ni!" Shampoo screamed, completely ignoring Ukyo and focusing all of her hateful attention on Nabiki.

"Time to go!"

There was a blur of motion, the world spun around Nabiki like she'd just slipped on a bar of soap, and then the wind was slamming into her face as Ranma cradled her in a bridal carry and fled the scene as fast as his legs could carry him. Without even thinking about it, Nabiki curled in tight against her savior's chest, trying to keep her heart from beating its way out of her chest. What the fuck had just happened?!

"Wo xi ni!" Shampoo screamed, disengaging her sword-lock with Ukyo's unorthodox weapon and sprinting after them.

"Dammit, you crazy Amazon, stop!" Ukyo cried out in frustration, giving chase as fast as she could. "Nabiki's a jerk, but you don't have to kill her!"

Nabiki had always known, abstractly, that Ranma and the other crazy martial artists that orbited him were capable of moving with considerable speed when properly motivated. But she'd never expected to have a front row seat!

The wind tore through her hair, short as it was, and stung her eyes as Ranma ripped across the school grounds at what she thought was the fastest that he'd ever run. It kind of felt like what she thought driving a racecar might be like, and from some unexplored depth a pang of sympathy for Akane welled up if this was the kind of thing she underwent on a regular basis for her engagement.

That feeling promptly popped like a soap bubble when Nabiki snuck a look around Ranma's shoulders and realized that _the crazy Amazon psycho-bitch was __**gaining on them!**_

"Faster, Ranma!" she cried out, fear easily trumping pride when the stakes - aka, her life - were so high.

"Fuck! What the hell set you off, Shampoo?!" Ranma swore, digging deep down to redouble his efforts.

Around and around the quartet went, weaving through the trees, leaping over benches, dodging startled students. There as no direction, no conscious plan, just the chase. In fact, so distracted were the quartet with their flight that they failed to notice as they approached two ancient trees, their branches weaving together into the outline of a door.

They didn't even notice the way that the space between the linked wood suddenly filled with shimmering, smog-like gray-black flames - not until they plunged right into them!

And then... they were gone. As if they had never been.

* * *

Ranma screwed his eyes tightly shut as the world suddenly spun and whirled around him, colors bleaching into a strange, washed out mist that nevertheless made his head spin. The last time he'd felt like this was when he'd been forced to eat all of those cookies of Akane's.

Even as he thought that, the sensation vanished as swiftly as it had arrived, causing him to cautiously open his eyes, wondering why - ohfuckwall!

Instinctively, Ranma curled and twisted to take the brunt of the impact whilst cushioning the girl in his arms; whatever anger he felt towards Nabiki, and he would be lying to say there wasn't still some resentment from before everything went crazy, he couldn't let her be hurt. It went against his (admittedly somewhat shaky) moral code.

So instead he ran face first into the wall, his head swimming as the sound of cracking brick and splintering wood filled his ears. Staggering backwards, Ranma flopped gracelessly onto the ground, landing flat on his back - but with Nabiki still held tight in his arms, miraculously unharmed.

Dimly, Ranma was aware of two more spectacular crashing impacts, but was far too caught up in trying to deal with the sudden frontal impact to care. He had been moving at proverbially mach speed, and that had been a far more sudden stop than he would have prefered...

So it took a good five minutes before, with a chorus of groans, four teenagers slowly lifted themselves from the ground.

Nabiki was the first to do so, directing an inscrutable look at her savior. "I... you saved me, Ranma?"

"What else was I s'posed to do?" Ranma replied dizzily, screwing his eyes shut as he willed the kanazuchibō in residence behind his skull to drop dead already.

"...Thanks, Ranma," Nabiki finally admitted humbly, not used to expressed gratitude.

"Nabiki! You I kill!"

Hearing that wrathful feminine screech from just behind her froze Nabiki in place on the spot, locked in the classic "deer in the headlights" pose. Ranma, fortunately for them both, was more used to thinking on his feet, and he shouted out the first thing that came to mind that seemed like it might help:

"Shampoo, if you hurt Nabiki, I'll never forgive you!"

The sword-wielding Chinese Amazon visibly recoiled at Ranma's words, sword falling down to rest against the ground. "Airen..." she warbled mournfully, looking on the verge of tears...

Which was when Ukyo popped up behind her and pounded her into the ground hard enough to leave an inches-deep crater in a rough Shampoo outline. "And stay down! Crazy Chinese kook!" Ranma's crossdressing fiancée spat, before she threw a tired grin at Ranma. "You okay, Ranma-honey? Oh, and I suppose Nabiki, too?"

"Yeah... thanks, Ukyo," Ranma replied sincerely.

"I'm fine, thanks to you two," Nabiki conceded, her relief at still being intact and amongst the living outweighing any resentment over Ukyo's attitude.

"That hurt, spatula-girl," Shampoo grumbled. "Why you do that?"

"Are you nuts? Seriously, Shampoo, what the hell? Why would you go after Nabiki like that?!" the incredulous bifauxnen asked.

"She selling Ranma as slave!" Shampoo protested indignantly from her undignified position. "Fighting slavers is sacred duty of Chinese Amazons!" she added, bristling with righteous indignation.

"...I really don't think that's what she meant to do, Shampoo," Ranma cautiously interjected. On the one hand, it was... actually a little nice that somebody had wanted to stick up for him. On the other hand, that had been way too over-the-top a way to do so!

"Yeah, I was just going to rent him out to the various clubs at Furinkan High for a few hours. Maybe auction off some dates, if any girls could pay the price," Nabiki added.

"Really not helping your case there, Nabiki," Ukyo dryly noted, before she turned her attention back to Shampoo. "Anyway, pulling out that sword was still overreacting! I mean, yeah, it would have been fine to beat her black and blue, but killing her? That's going too far!"

"Gee, thanks, Ukyo," Nabiki drawled sarcastically.

Ignoring her, Ukyo continued, "Now, are you gonna calm down and act reasonable? Or do you need to stay down there in the...dirt?"

Ukyo's audible surprise and the way she trailed off uncertainly made all three of the other teens immediately respond with first curiosity, and then wariness. Especially when Ukyo didn't even wait for Shampoo's reply before removing her oversized spatula from the downed Chinese girl's back, looking all around them.

"...Guys? I don't think we're on Furinkan's grounds any more..."

Those fateful words finally brought their surroundings to their attention, no longer caught up in their original drama. Sure enough, as Ukyo had said, they weren't on school grounds anymore; the blue skies, green grass and abundant trees of Furinkan High had been replaced by the confines of a squalid alley, rough cobblestones interspersed with mud stretching across a narrow gap between at least two tumble-down buildings made of cracking brick and rotting wood, imprints in the nearby wall showing where the quartet had made their recent stop.

They could barely see the sky above, as the ramshackle buildings leaning together to cast the place into darkness, but they could make out a thick, greasy fog swirling through the air around them.

And that was when the Smell hit them like a jackhammer to the face. Yes, it fully deserved the capital S.

Nabiki squealed in dismay, clapping her hands over her face in a futile attempt to filter out the noxious odor. It reminded her of a cocktail of a dumpster full of rotting food, mixed with stagnant water and primal memories of the days when Akane had yet to master the art of toilet training. "Oh, kami, what is that stink!?" she wailed.

"Too-too nasty!" Shampoo cried out.

"We definitely aren't in Furinkan... hell, I don't think we're in Nerima!" Ranma concluded. Having spent his life on the road, Ranma had camped in more noisome alleys and stormwater outlets and other smelly, dirty, out-of-the-way parts of the city than he ever intended to admit. But even by his experience, this place _stunk_. "How'd we get here?" he asked.

"More to the point... how do we get back?" Ukyo pointed out, drawing shocked expressions from all thee and gasps of alarm as they realized what she had just said.

The quartet of teens frantically looked around, but they saw nothing useful; just dirt and grime and scattered rubbish. So, of course, they fell back into old habits.

"This your fault, Nabiki!" Shampoo snapped, glaring at the middle Tendo daughter.

"My fault?!" Nabiki retorted, her incredulity actually overpowering her normal and carefully cultivated attitude of blitheness. "You were the one chasing us everywhere with a sword! If anything, this is your fault!"

"What you say?!" Shampoo snarled, hands clenching into fists.

"Enough!"

All three girls started, their heads whipping around to look at Ranma, who was standing in the middle of the alley with his arms folded and his face set firmly.

"Panicking an' arguing ain't gonna help us! Fact is, we don't know how we got here, or where 'here' even is. We gotta pull together and take this calmly so we can figure it out. Okay?"

"That may be the most sensible thing I've ever heard you say, Saotome," Nabiki noted, almost sincerely marveling as she did so.

"I get plenty of bright ideas! ...Nobody ever wants to listen to me, that's all," Ranma scoffed with a bit of a put upon air. "So, like I said; we need to pull together! So let's stop fighting with each other and work on getting back home - we can go back to killing each other there, okay?"

"Sounds close enough to a plan to me," Nabiki added. "But can we trust these two to go along with it?"

"Hey, I was trying to save you!" Ukyo indignantly pointed out. "But yeah, Ranchan, that sounds good. I'm all for pulling a truce until we can get back home."

"Shampoo agree."

"Aw, ain't that cute? The Clueless berks 're all made up! Now let's see if they've got enough in their bone-boxes to rattle, or will we need to tickle 'em wiv our chivs to get 'em to cough up all their jink!"

The four teenagers blinked as that alien voice reached them. As one, they turned towards the far end of the alley, where three figures skulked forth from the gloom. They looked like nothing that even Ranma had seen before; the garb was weird enough, a mixture of filthy rags and tattered clothes in a mishmash of unfamiliar styles, but their appearance was another thing entirely! Each was crimson-skinned, with burning eyes, curling horns rising from their skulls, and fleshy tails flicking behind them. Each was also armed; a club, a handaxe, and a dagger for the one who had spoken first, and was seemingly the leader. Nothing intimidating for three quarters of the Nerima-based teens, but the alien forms of their wielders had them all stunned into silence.

Emboldened by this apparent fear, the strange, twisted trio slunk closer, mice bearding a band of cats. The dagger-wielding leader leered through broken, blackened teeth, a forked tongue flickering as he chortled, "Ooh, we gots some pretty ones here... how's about it, girly? Wanna have a dance with old Mumpty Peg?"

And that was when he made his big mistake. He reached out with his dagger, attempting to bring the point to rest against Shampoo's throat. Instead, her hand shot out like a striking snake, wrapping around the monstrous mugger's wrist and bringing his approach to a dead halt. The strange thief, still not realizing how much danger he was in, simply scowled, "Lemme go, ya leatherheaded-!"

The _***crack***_ of bone breaking made Nabiki wince, whilst even Ranma and Ukyo shifted a little uncomfortably. Shampoo's would-be mugger screamed in a mixture of pain, fear and rage, before she laid him out cold with a lightning-fast jab to the face. Down the former assailant went, black blood streaming from a squashed nose, with Shampoo surging past him before he'd even hit the ground. The remaining muggers didn't even have time to raise their weapons before Shampoo fell on them like a tidal wave, slamming them into the ground with brutal efficiency.

If any of her fellows had blinked, they would have missed the whole show.

"...Huh. For demons, they weak," Shampoo noted conversationally, idly tapping one fallen mugger's head with the tip of her shoe.

"Are you sure they are demons?" Ranma asked. "I mean, I have fought a couple of monsters in the past, and none of them went down so easy..."

"Well, what else could they be? They even look like those American cartoon versions of demons," Ukyo pointed out.

"I don't know about you girls, but I never really expected the demon realms to resemble a foggy alley reeking of urine, trash and dead things," Nabiki interjected.

"Focus, girls. We're obviously not alone here. So, we can either stand around here and wait for more of these... whatever they are... to come after us, or we can try and get out of here," Ranma said.

"Ranma right. Shampoo follow you, Airen," the Joketsuzoku chirped, zipping back over to the side of her reluctantly betrothed and linking her arm with his.

"Hey! Paws off, China girl!" Ukyo snapped, rushing to claim the other side in what had to be ingrained instinct by now.

"Can we not do this?!" Nabiki pleaded, an inkling as to why Akane hated this now seeping into her brain. "This is the absolute worst possible time for you two to start this up again!"

Both of Ranma's other fiancées fixed a steely gaze on Nabiki, who had to call on all her emotional control to return their gaze with a cool, neutral, collected expression, given that she had just had such a firsthand taste of how dangerously volatile they could be. Though she would never admit it, Ranma's sudden interjection of "Nabiki's right," was a huge relief to her.

Neither Shampoo nor Ukyo looked particularly happy. But even they had to admit that there was sense in what Nabiki had said, and besides that, neither wanted to hurt their standing with Ranma in that way.

So Shampoo reluctantly untwined her arm from Ranma's, whereupon the four cautiously walked past the groaning heaps that had been their muggers and followed the alley to its entrance.

With almost perfect dramatic sensibilities, the fog surrounding them drew back to reveal their surroundings in all their... splendor.

Crumbling buildings made of cracking bricks and rotting wood loomed oppressively all around them, seemingly held together more by a strange black ivy-like creeper that crawled over their surfaces than by any effort of builders or designers.

Running between them were... well, calling them "streets" was, if anything, flattering them; strips of beaten earth, riddled with potholes and ruts, strewn with puddles of stagnant and filthsome water. Bodily waste, dead animals and garbage were strewn everywhere and throughout it all wandered dozens of rag-clad, filthy, downtrodden forms, who lumbered, staggered and aimlessly drifted in all directions. Some sat down in the street, or huddled around crude fires full of burning garbage.

Most just seemed to be roaming for the sake of it, as if they had nothing else to do but walk until they dropped. Weirdly, whilst some were the same horned 'demons' that they had just met, there were dozens of other different creatures - some even looked like humans, albeit the most dirty, wretched and unwholesome specimens imaginable.

"...I have been to some nasty parts of town in my life," Ranma admitted, stunned into speech by what he was seeing. "But I have never seen anywhere as bad as this."

"Reminds me of reading Charles Dickens in Junior High," Nabiki added, taking in the sight with visible appall on her face. "Only worse, somehow," she amended herself.

Shampoo was looking around with the most disgusted expression anyone had ever seen her bearing. But Ukyo was not... instead, she was staring at some of the figures intensely, her brow furrowed in thought. "...Orcs?" she murmured to herself.

Not quietly enough to escape Ranma's notice. "What was that, Ukyo?"

She started, and then shook her head. "I... no, forget it, Ranchan. It's silly."

"What's silly? Come on, Ucchan, tell me," he asked her, the earnest tone in his voice whittling away her resolve like a blowtorch on an icicle.

The crossdressing chef visibly struggled, then shrugged her shoulders and sighed. "Do you see those people over there?" she asked, pointing to a small cluster of rag-clad, muscular figures with gray skin, heavy-boned faces and protruding tusks.

"I think those are orcs," she explained.

"And orcs are...?" Nabiki drawled, trying to coax Ukyo into giving an actual explanation.

Ukyo wrinkled her nose, clearly trying to think of the best way to put it. Finally, she just spat it out, "Back in my last school, I joined up with one of the nerdier clubs to get out being roped into the sports clubs - y'know, the whole 'pretending to be a guy' thing? They were a tabletop gaming club, and one of the big things they were always doing was playing this game from America - Dungeons and Dragons? It's all about exploring crazy worlds full of magic and monsters."

The others just listened to Ukyo, not wanting to interrupt and a touch surprised and impressed at this hidden font of now-useful knowledge.

"Now, I don't know what's going on, or how it's possible, but those guys? I swear, they look like orcs - a sort of monster race from the game. And those little things over there? Goblins. And I swear that's a bullywug," she finished, pointing at a leprous toad-man squatting in one particularly noxious puddle of filth whilst glowering at all and sundry with resigned hatred.

"Interesting... do you think that maybe you can use that?" Nabiki asked, looking at Ukyo with an appraising look.

"I don't... think so? I mean, I was never that into the game, and it was some time ago, so I don't remember all that much," the crossdresser confessed, shrugging her shoulders haplessly.

"Besides, that was just a game; this is reality," she pointed out.

"Fair enough," Nabiki conceded. Damn, and there she'd been thinking Ukyo might actually be useful... ignoring the way that she had technically saved Nabiki's life earlier. "Wait... then could it be possible that this isn't the whole city? Maybe we're just in the bad part of town? ...The really, _**really **_bad part of town," she amended herself, lip curling in disgust as one bystander suddenly yanked down their trousers, squatted down and began to defecate in the middle of the street, earning half-heartedly shouted abuse from some of the others passing by.

"Maybe? I mean, we gotta have hope, right?" Ukyo responded, looking away from the disgusting display.

"Well, we're not gonna find out if we just keep standing here. C'mon, girls, let's go," Ranma said, making a 'follow me' gesture as he walked towards a random street. The group didn't know where it lead, but it had to be better than here.

* * *

Several hours later...

* * *

"I-I can't go on! I need to rest!" Nabiki puffed.

"Again?" Ukyo asked rhetorically, heaving an exasperated sigh.

"Some of us aren't martial arts monsters who consider jogging a hundred miles before breakfast to be light exercise!" Nabiki huffed, too fed up to keep control over her temper but too tired to really put any bite in her retort. The fact she was leaning against Ranma for support, with her reluctant fiancé stoically allowing her to do so, wasn't helping her mood much.

"We been walking long time... how big this city?" Shampoo wondered aloud, eyes wandering the area they'd stopped in.

"Don't know... it's not helping that there's no real signs or anything to help us find out way. And everybody here seems to be either crazy or a jerk," Ranma grumbled, glaring half-heartedly at some of the others on the street.

Tentative requests for assistance had led to nothing but insults and slurs, aside from the occasional obvious crook who clearly wanted to lead them into trouble or that one lunatic who had suddenly leapt at them, howling like a dog and trying to bite them... right up until Ranma had slammed his face into the ground and left him in an unconscious stupor.

"It's getting darker, too. Must be evening," Ukyo noted, her eyes barely managing to make out the sky through the fog and smog.

"Great. As if the fog and the twisty-turny streets and all the rest of it wasn't bad enough! What else could go wrong?" Ranma lamented dramatically. Nabiki was about to chew him out for taunting murphy when shouts interrupted them.

"I'm warning you, stay back!"

"Pike it, Clueless berk! Cough up the jink, or we'll stick ya inna dead-book!"

All four teens looked over at the source of the voices, which were coming from a nearby alley. Immediately, Ranma shot off, with the girls close behind; Ukyo and Shampoo eager to impress their ever-reluctant mate, Nabiki anxious not to be left alone in these dirty, dangerous streets.

Another band of thugs greeted their eyes, about eight of them this time, surrounding a figure who had been backed up against the wall. This unfortunate was clad in much nicer clothing than anything that the quartet had seen so far - not only was it clean and intact, it actually looked like it had some kind of style, giving them hope to the idea that there were nicer parts of this freaky city. The victim had their - his - hands up in a warding gesture, whilst one of the thugs advanced on him with a dagger.

"Gonna peel off yer skin and make a cape from it!" he slavered...

Which was when Ranma descended from on-high like a thunderbolt, Goomba-stomping that feckless mugger to the ground and leaving him unconscious. "Okay, now that was just wrong," he grizzled. Before the gobsmacked thugs could even process what they were seeing, Ranma's hands shot out like bullets, knocking two more of them flying, unconscious before they even hit the ground. The five remaining fared no better as Shampoo and Ukyo piled in, leaving them scattered in heaps like the rubbish they so resembled.

Smirking to himself, Ranma stepped off his first victim, making a show of dusting off his hands. "Well, that was easy."

"Me will smash your face!"

On pure instinct, Ranma's hands shot up and caught the weapon flying towards his skull in a downward arc. He almost didn't manage to hold it back, the blow landing with far greater strength than the startled martial artist had anticipated - the dried clay underfoot spiderwebbed with cracks from the impact as it rolled through Ranma's body and down into the ground beneath him.

Grunting, Ranma twisted around, looking up to see what had almost hit him - an enormous bone, as thick around as he was, almost like something out of an American cartoon - and its wielder. "Wow. You're a big boy, aren'tcha?" Ranma observed, taking in his assailant; as tall and beefy as the Dojo Destroyer he had battled during that little incident with the Instant Nanniichuan, but with a craggy face and snaggletoothed grimace.

"Rrrrargh! Stupid little man! Let go Umlok's club!" the brute snarled, yanking on the bone and pulling it from Ranma's grasp. The girls quickly fell back, giving Ranma room to move as the man-beast swung his osseous cudgel in powerful but clumsy blows.

Ranma almost pitied the dumb bruiser. Akane would have laughed at this beast's lack of control and overextended swings. But still, the impact had rattled his bones enough that he knew he did _**not **_want to take a hit from the creature if he could avoid it!

Instead, when it made its next vertical downwards swing, Ranma ducked inside of its arc, letting the oversized bone pound a new crater into the muddy street. Using some of his more basic martial arts techniques, he grabbed the oversized humanoid whilst it was vulnerable and turned its own weight against it, sending it flying through the air to land with a muddy splash in the street.

The brute-man roared and thrashed its limbs, reminding those present of an oversized baby throwing a tantrum before it sat up. "No fair! Little man cheat! Umlock will - wha? No!"

Dumbfounded, the four teens watched as the oversized figure visibly sank into the earth, sharply and steadily sinking downwards like a boulder thrown into quicksand. It roared and flailed desperately, bellows of rage giving way to deepest fear. Before any of them could even think to step in and help... it was too late. The last thing they saw were a pair of ham-sized hands grasping desperately at the sky above before they vanished with a sickening wet gurgle into the bottom of a filthy mud puddle that they would have sworn was far too small to fit one of them, never mind a creature so big as that!

"...What the fuck was that?!" Ranma blurted out, unable to tear his eyes away. He'd just been intending to knock the bruiser around a little - not kill him!

"An ooze portal. You just sent that ogre on a one-way ticket to the Abyss. Good riddance," came a voice from behind them.

The four teens turned to see the man they had just saved walking up to them, allowing them to finally get a better look at him. As they had spotted beforehand, his clothing was of a far finer make than anything they'd seen in this noxious slum, tailored to fit him well.

He was a handsome seeming man, older than the teens but still youthful, with a strangely ageless cast to his features. He also had skin of an inky blue, darkening to black in the right light, contrasting snowy white hair that he wore in an almost Mousse-like set of flowing locks, framing both eyes that were a single undifferentiated mass of rose-pink as well as elongated, pointy-tipped, leaf-like ears.

Ranma, however, was still more focused on what he had just seen than on the fact that the subject of his random good-deed was clearly not human; that had stopped being surprising several hours ago. "I'm sorry, but, again; what the _**fuck**_?!"

"Ooze portals," the stranger repeated matter of factly, pointing at the puddle - which still looked for all the world like any ordinary stagnant mud puddle. "A natural hazard here in the Hive Ward. They're randomly forming, one-way portals to parts of the Abyss associated with slime and decay - usually Shedaklah or Molor, but I've heard they can also lead to places like Slugbed or the Barrens."

"...And I'm guessing that none of those places are very nice places to be?" Nabiki tentatively responded, now _very_ aware of where any puddles were around her.

"No. No, they are not," the dark-skinned stranger said, giving them a wave of his hand clearly meant to be reassuring. "But, anyway, I am grateful to you for your assistance."

"That's what martial artists do; we help those in need," Ranma replied automatically, visibly trying to shrug off what he had just been told about that creature - that ogre's? - fate.

"I see... and why is your friend staring at me?" the non-Neriman asked cautiously.

Ranma blinked in surprise, before turning to see that Ukyo was studying their new acquaintance intensely. "Ucchan?" he asked.

Amazingly, Ukyo ignored him. "Those ears... sir? I'm sorry, but... might you be... I mean, are you... an elf?"

"Why would you ask him that?" Ranma blurted out incredulously.

"Well, in the game, elves were one of the good races. They were peaceful, loving, gentle and wise... they were also powerful wizards, with a natural affinity for magic. That means he might be able to get us home!" Ukyo explained rapidly.

This information distracted the other three teens, soft exclamations of surprise, hope and relief filling the air. Unnoticed by any of them, the 'elf' was watching, his expression shifting from shocked incredulity, through anger, onto contemplation, and finally past amusement before he carefully schooled his features to be neutral. "Yes, I am an... elf. But... 'get us home'? You did not come to Sigil voluntarily?" he asked.

"Sigil?" Nabiki repeated, filing that away in her mental book of 'useful things to know'... right under 'the mud puddles here **can eat you**'.

"You can say that again," Ranma scoffed. "One moment we were on the school grounds... the next, we were here. Wherever 'here' is."

"Fascinating... I suspected you to be Primes, but Keyless too?" the elf stroked his chin. "But this is no place to talk, and I do owe you a favor. My name is Baeloth Ryltar - what might your names be?"

"Oh! Sorry, I'm Saotome Ranma."

"Tendo Nabiki."

"Kuonji Ukyo."

"Shampoo."

Baeloth nodded gently. "A pleasure. Follow me; we shall adjourn to my home in the Clerk's Ward and give the laugh to the Hive," he stated, before authoritatively striding out of the alley.

Without a word, the four teenagers quickly fell into step behind him, anxious to be metaphorically one step closer to home and literally one step away from this stinking slum.

"So, how far is this Clerk's Ward from here?" Nabiki asked.

"By foot? It would take us hours to get there... fortunately, I know of a skip-gate that isn't too far, and comes out close to my home too," Baeloth replied.

"Skip-gate?" the middle Tendo daughter repeated, but there was no reply.

Within about ten minutes, the dark-skinned elf had led them to a nameless hole-in-the-wall style inn, with the sounds of a vicious bar brawl rattling out from the gloomy interior. Instead of going inside, however, Baeloth led them around it, to an alley that ran behind the inn, littered with smashed and decaying barrels. Once there, he turned back to his followers. "Now, this will be confusing, and I promise to explain it later, but I need you to listen to me and do exactly what I say. Can you whistle?"

All four teens, confused but trusting, nodded to show that they could.

"Right. I need you to whistle this exact tune-" and here he demonstrated a simple three-note chime, waiting for each of the teens to repeat it back before he continued, "and then climb into this barrel." He thumped the side of a broken-topped barrel that was barely waist-high for emphasis.

"...Why?" Ranma asked cautiously.

"No time to explain! Just trust me and do as I do, please?" Baeloth replied. Not waiting for a reply, the inky-hued elf turned to the barrel and whistled in the way he'd shown them before stepping into the barrel... and dropping completely out of sight.

Instinctively, Ranma stepped forward to look into the barrel... only to see it was empty! "The hell? He's gone!" he exclaimed.

"I told you, elves are magical! It must be some kind of... I don't know, mystical shortcut," Ukyo interjected. "Here, let me try..."

Ranma stepped aside and watched as his crossdressing fiancée repeated Baeloth's actions. Sure enough, she vanished from sight by doing so. "...Magic is weird," he muttered to himself, shaking his head. And he used to think changing form with cold water was strange! Turning to the other girls, he asked, "Who wants to go next?"

Nabiki and Shampoo looked at each other, and even Ranma could see they were less than happy with what they saw. "After you, Shampoo," Nabiki said with patently false courtesy.

"No, no, Shampoo insist; Nabiki go first," the Joketsuzoku replied with equally insincere goodwill, gesturing for the 'mercenary girl' to go.

Ranma gave a tortured sigh of resignation, some things will never change . "Okay then, I'll go first, and you girls can follow when you're ready," he declared with an affected air of boredom. A little cold, maybe, but in truth he was still at least mildly annoyed with both of them, and it's not as if he expected them to really get into trouble if he took his eyes off of them.

Not waiting for a reply, Ranma turned back to the barrel, whistled those three notes, and then stepped inside. A strange feeling washed through his body, a sensation of weightlessness and disorientation that made him close his eyes, right before he felt his feet on solid ground again.

When he opened his eyes, however, he found his surroundings very changed indeed. Gone was the mud, the dirt roads, the crumbling buildings, the overwhelming stench of squalor and decay, the filthy and ragged individuals. Instead, he was walking on clean, well-swept cobblestones, which ran in straight and orderly lines between nice-looking, if somewhat plain, buildings.

Though the array of architectural styles on display was staggering, with no two structures being built in quite the same way, all were well-crafted and clearly looked after - a far cry from the dilapidated near-ruins of... what had Baeloth called it? The Hive?

Ranma was so distracted that Nabiki actually bumped into him when she stepped through the 'skip-gate' that Baeloth had shown them, with Shampoo hot on her heels. "Wow... this place is something else..." he commented, talking to himself more than anyone else.

"You should see it during the peak hours, and when the fog is thinner. You've barely scratched the surface of what makes Sigil so special," Baeloth said, finally drawing the triad's attention to him and Ukyo. "Come; my home is this way."

As the quintet set off, the four teenagers all tried to drink in as much of their environment as they could. Though the unseen sun was clearly dimming, the streets abounded with iron lamposts, atop which balls of colored light were flickering into being. And despite the late hour, the streets still abounded with all manner of strange, unearthly people.

They saw plenty of humans, weirdly enough, but they were a definite minority amongst all the other bizarre creatures. In the span of a few blocks, they saw beings like Baeloth, but fair-skinned; creatures that reminded them of Cologne and Happosai with their combination of child-like stature and visible agedness; short, stocky and powerful-looking humanoids with long flowing hair; creatures that looked like mountain goats with the bodies of horned, slightly ovine-featured humanoids replacing their heads; a woman whose body bristled with metallic spikes that seemed to grow from her very flesh; a nine-foot-tall praying mantis with gems and precious metals inlaid on its carapace wearing what looked like a nurse's smock; and a humanoid wolf dressed like it had just stepped off the cover of a Three Musketeers manga.

It really hammered home what the Hive had already tentatively hinted at: this was a far, far remove from Nerima.

Finally, Baeloth led them to a short, squat building, seemingly built of slabs of stone coaxed together. "Be it ever so humble, there's no kip like home," the dark-skinned elf mused, withdrawing a key from his belongings and unlocking the front door.

Once inside, the teens immediately began stripping off their shoes - good manners in any ordinary situation, absolutely essential when they were covered in the... they'd be generous and call it "mud" that they'd been caked in from the Hive. Sadly, there was little to do about their clothes, but they tried to dust themselves off at the doorway as best they could.

Strangely, it was the lack of the traditional genkan that truly helped hammer home how foreign this place truly was.

If Baeloth noticed their confusion, he didn't comment on it, instead moving swiftly into the hallways beyond - surprisingly dark and gloomy, but none of the teens said anything, figuring it must be an elf thing. "I'm home, my little mugwump," he called out in a cheerful voice.

"How many times have I told you not to call me that, you overgrown spider-catcher?" Came a feminine voice, affectionate in tone despite the caustic nature of her words. From out of the darkness came a woman very different to anything that any of the teens from Tokyo had anticipated; whereas Baeloth was tall and slender, she was short and squat, blocky with visible muscle in contrast to the elf's sylph-like build, but at the same time very obviously female, with a dress that strained around a massive, defiantly outhrust bosom... and a round, clearly pregnant stomach. The only thing that she shared in common with him was a similar inhuman color scheme; marble black skin streaked with patterns of fiery orange-red, eyes of a solid copper color, and long white hair. She waddled up to the quintet, casting a suspicious glance over the teens. "And who are these humans?" she asked.

Baeloth simply smiled before stooping down and wrapping his arms around the squat little woman, pressing his mouth to hers in a passionate kiss. Ranma hastily averted his eyes, whilst Ukyo blushed and stifled a giggle. Shampoo simply gave their technique an idle once-over, whilst Nabiki carefully schooled her expression into its familiar cool, detached look.

When Baeloth broke the kiss, he straightened up and gestured to the teens. "My love? Meet Saotome Ranma, Tendo Nabiki, Kuonji Ukyo and Shampoo. They saved me from a band of thugs in the Hive Ward. My friends? This is my beloved wife, Weltha."

"Nihao!" Shampoo chirped, followed by a more subdued set of "His" and "Hellos" from her companions.

Weltha looked up at the teens, a frown on her face. "You saved my stalactite?" she asked, earning both a quizzical look at the pet-name and a group nod. "Then you're welcome here," she added, face relaxing and a faint smile curling her lips.

"Our friends will need to stay the night... they're Keyless," Baeloth interjected.

Weltha turned to look at him with obvious surprise, and at his nod gave the teens a sympathetic look. "Poor things... of course you can stay. We have a spare bedroom that you can share for the night, and I was just about to start making dinner."

"One bedroom?" Nabiki interjected. '_Oh, that's not good, that's not good at all... those two would kill each other over one bed anyway, but add Ranma into the mix...!'_ She did her best to keep her panic at the idea from showing. Fortunately, there was a reason she was called the Ice Queen of Furinkan High... okay, several reasons, but her staunch control over her emotions was one of them.

Weltha scoffed loudly. "We may live in the Administrator's District, but we're a long way off being top of the heap, never mind ready for the Lady's Ward. One spare bedroom is all we have, and even that we won't have free for you for much longer." As she said this, she unconsciously laid one hand on her stomach.

"One bedroom plenty. Shampo used to sharing bed with great-grandmother," the Joketsuzoku quickly assured her new host.

"All settled, then! Dearest, will you run along and see to dinner? I promised to try and help our guests go from clueless to bloods; we'll be in the study," Baeloth said.

Weltha nodded and then tilted her head expectantly, prompting Baeloth to stoop down again and kiss her. As they broke their liplock, Ukyo commented, "I never expected elf women to be so short."

The husband and wife went silent, turning to stare at Ukyo, with Weltha in particular looking absolutely dumbfounded. "...What?" she asked, as if she didn't trust her own ears.

Baeloth simply laughed. "Like I said, our friends are Clueless... that, Ms. Ukyo, is because my little mugwump is not an elf, like I am, but instead she is a dwarf," he explained.

"Ohh!" Ukyo replied, eyes going wide in realization as she nodded... before she frowned again. "Wait... don't elves and dwarves dislike each other?"

"For the most part? Yes. That is why our relationship was so scandalous," Baeloth replied with a flippant grin.

"Forbidden love? Too-too romantic," Shampoo sighed softly, Ukyo nodding in agreement whilst Ranma and Nabiki tried not to let their mutual eye-rolls be seen.

"Yes... but that's a story for another time. Now, if you will follow me?" Baeloth politely asked. As his wife waddled away to what they presumed was the kitchen, the teens followed the elf to a fairly comfortable room, with shelves of books lining the walls and a number of chairs centered around a fireplace.

Baeloth immediately grabbed the largest and most comfortable-looking chair, leaving the teens to take their own seats. Once they were all seated, Baeloth steepled his hands in front of himself and looked at them all. "Now... before we begin; what do you know of the multiverse?"

"...Never heard the word before," Ranma reluctantly admitted.

"I think I have... it's something like a universe of universes? Many different universes all linked together to form a greater body?" Ukyo volunteered, looking uncertain as she did so.

Baeloth smiled and gestured at Ukyo. "That's exactly right, Ms. Ukyo. A little simple, but simple is good. In fact, the multiverse is made up of what sages call 'planes', which are... How to put this? They are the building blocks of reality itself. The different 'flavors' that make up the 'stew' of existence, if you will? There are many, _many _different ways to interpret and structure the multiverse, and sages argue over its layout constantly. The simplest interpretation, though, looks something like this..."

As the teens watched in fascination, Baeloth extended one hand, palm upright, and from his palm multicolored vapors began to rise. They twisted and shimmered, warping together until a set of five spheres hovered over his palm, shaped into a cross-pattern.

The centermost reminded them of a globe, albeit one with a set of continents that were completely unfamiliar. The rightmost was a mirror of the center, but painted in vibrant, almost neon-like colors. The leftmost was a darkened, dead-looking mirror. The topmost sphere was filled with glowing rainbows and stars, whilst the bottommost contained a whirling tornado of wind, lightning and flame.

"This 'map' of the multiverse is the simplest, dividing reality into five primary planes. The materium," he gestured at the one sphere in the center, "is perhaps best thought of as the 'mundane' plane. This is the plane from which almost mortal life originates. For this reason, it's commonly called the prime plane, the material plane, or even the prime material plane. As what we call 'primes', you came from this plane, on one of the infinite worlds that make up its particular corner of creation."

Next, he gestured to the rightmost sphere. "This is the Feywild, or the plane of faerie. It is home to the fey creatures of the multiverse - my own people, the elves, originated here before we migrated to the prime."

Then the leftmost sphere. "The Shadowfell, in comparison, is the plane of the dead. The souls of all mortals travel here upon their death, to be processed and sent on to their respective fates, be that reincarnation, damnation, or exaltation."

The top sphere. "This is the Astral Sea, the plane of the gods. Deities and their servants live here, and to the best of anyone's knowledge, originated here." Finally, he pointed at the bottommost sphere. "And this is the Elemental Chaos, the primordial plane. It is the foundation of the material plane and all things shaped from it, the plane of matter standing in contrast to the Astral Sea as the plane of spirit. Are you all with me so far?" Baeloth suddenly asked.

"Yeah, we're with you... seems kind of simple, though," Ranma confessed.

"Well, this _is_ the simplest interpretation - I am actually leaving out several other major planes, such as the Abyss, the Far Realm, the Plane of Dreams and the Accordant Expanse, and many of the sub-aspects of planar structure, such as layers and demiplanes. Besides this, there are other multiversal interpretations, although how accurate any given one is to reality is something that people have killed each other trying to ascertain. In fact, this is a fairly popular theory - if only because it's much, much older than the model I just showed you..."

The spheres dissolved back into colored smoke again, which began to swell into a veritable stormcloud. It spread outwards and upwards, forming an ever-more complex array of spheres linked into a complex array of interlocking rings and designs. "If you would prefer to view things through the lens of the Great Wheel..." Baeloth began.

"No! No thank you! We'll go back to the other one!" Ranma interjected hurridly. Just trying to make sense of this new and convoluted diagram was giving him a headache, and even the girls nodded their agreement.

The shining rings of spheres collapsed back in on themselves and disappeared. "It's all academic, really; the Great Wheel is mostly a more strictly categorized interpretation of the World Axis. And even then, you don't need to know that much about the planes other than that they exist and that they are home to a wide array of creatures. Unless of course you choose to become planeswalkers," Baeloth added, chuckling at some private joke.

"Okay... so what was the point of telling us all that?" Nabiki asked.

"Context. You need to know the multiverse exists to comprehend what I am about to tell you. You see, this is the city of Sigil - the Cage of Doors, in some circles, though most call it either the Cage or the City of Doors," Baeloth explained. "If seen from outside, Sigil would look something like this..."

Once more, the image-smoke began emerging from the elf's hand, forming into... a great stone-gray donut? Before the teens could speak, the donut split open, uncurling to form a cylinder - which let them see that it was hollow. The cylinder then split open horizontally, peeling back until it was stretched out as a flat expanse, one covered in a city in miniature.

It was an image that made Ranma's eyes water. "So... we're in a city that's built into a circle?" He asked, feeling like an idiot even for saying that.

"Wait, so city continues onto roof?" Shampoo interjected.

"Precisely. Oh, the weather is usually so lousy you can never see it, and of course geography rarely makes it visible in the nastier parts of Sigil, but yes; if you were to go back out into the street and look straight up, you would see the city built upside down across the sky above you," Baeloth explained.

"So... what plane does Sigil exist on?" Nabiki asked, trying not to think about the geographical impossibilities of what she'd just been told.

"Some say it exists at the center of the multiverse. Others say it exists outside of the multiverse. Truthfully? Nobody knows. But Sigil is unique in all the multiverse - there are other planar metropoli, such as the City of Brass, Hestavar, Azzagrat and Gloomwrought, but none can compete with Sigil where it matters," Baeloth noted proudly.

"This has got something to do with that 'Cage of Doors' thing you mentioned, doesn't it?" Ranma asked.

"Indeed. Sigil is simultaneously cut off from the multiverse and completely intertwined with it. There is no physical outside to Sigil, in so far as anyone knows. But the city is absolutely riddled with portals - magic doorways that link different parts of the multiverse," the elf quickly elaborated.

"...I get it; so Sigil is basically one giant multiversal port? People use these portals to visit from every plane?" Ranma asked, really hoping he got this one right and the impromptu lesson could stop already.

"Not just every plane, but every world! The materium in particular is filled with countless unique worlds, each with its own cultures and races - and Sigil can touch them all. You sit now at the beating heart of the greatest interplanar trading and navigation hub that has ever and will ever exist," Baeloth declared proudly.

The teens sat in silence for a moment, the elf's words sinking in as they digested the implications. "That's how we got here, then! We must have literally stumbled through one of your portals and come here, right?" Ranma asked.

"That's exactly right," Baeloth confirmed, smiling at Ranma like a teacher proud of his student.

"Then we just find portal and we go straight back home, yes?!" Shampoo chimed in excitedly.

At that, Baeloth's expression fell, and he steepled his hands again. "Well... yes, but actually no."

"What do you mean, 'yes and no'?" Ukyo interjected, not liking where this was going.

"That's why you were calling us 'Keyless', isn't it? We're stranded somehow?" Nabiki realized, not even thinking to realize what might happen if she said that aloud. Fortunately, the other teens were stunned by her words, looking at her in horror before Baeloth drew their attention back to him with a single word:

"Yes."

"How?! Why?!" Ranma blurted out, almost getting whiplash with how fast he switched his attention from Nabiki to Baeloth.

"You have to understand; portals are almost never permanently open, especially portals from Sigil. They almost always have a key - some component, be it material, verbal, somatic, mental or emotional - that you need to provide in order to activate their magic. Without that key, they won't turn on," the elf explained.

"So that's why you had us whistle that tune earlier!" Nabiki interjected.

"Precisely; that's the key to activate that particular portal. Without it, you'd just have stood inside an ordinary broken barrel," Baeloth gave a little nod of approval towards Nabiki. "And since you all came through without meaning to, it's obvious that you don't know what the key is to activate the portal that brought you here. Fortunately, Sigil is also rife with Pryers - people who make money by using rituals like Analyze Portal to reverse-engineer exactly that kind of information. So you can hire somebody to help you find out what the key is to take you home. It won't be cheap, but it's not an insurmountable obstacle."

Relief washed over the teens like a tidal wave, with Ranma, Ukyo and Shampoo all visibly relaxing and smiling at Baeloth's words. "You had us worried there for a moment," Ukyo confessed, a soft giggle escaping her lips as the tension drained from her body.

"Oh, no..."

The teens all looked at Nabiki, who was staring into space with a horrified expression on her face. "What's wrong, Nabiki? Don't tell me you'd rather be stuck here than spend some money!" Ranma scoffed.

The money-grubbing Tendo didn't even blink at her reluctant fiancé's words. "Finding the key is one thing... but what about if we don't know where the portal is?" Nabiki said in an uncharacteristically small voice.

Silence fell upon the room... before three teenage voices rose in a single shelf-rattling chorus of, "_**WHAT?!"**_

"Do you remember where it was we entered this city? Would you know how to backtrack from here to where we started? Could you point it out on a map?" Nabiki asked the others, looking at them with visible fear, having already wracked her brain for those same details.

Three faces fell in unison as they realized the impact of Nabiki's words. Ranma reached up and clutched his head as if it were about to split open. Ukyo stared into space, whispering the word "No" to herself over and over again. Desperately, Shampoo turned to the dark elf, "Is-is way around this, yes? Is people what can find portals?" she pleaded with him.

"Yes, there are - world-sniffers is the common parlance for them," Baeleoth confirmed. He flinched as four faces turned hopeful eyes toward him, quickly adding, "But they are rare and their services in high demand; it will cost a fortune to acquire their services! Especially since the portal you came from emerged in the Hive, which is dangerous territory - and some of the least stable in Sigil."

"...Least stable?" Ranma asked hesitantly.

"Suffice it to say that the City of Doors is in constant flux. Streets and buildings move, divide and shift, both at the behest of the dabus and in response to their own strange whims. What is in one place today might not be there tomorrow," Baeloth explained grimly.

"...You're making that up," Nabiki stated, trying to cling to hope.

"In my first week here, I had to midwife a pregnant street. Believe me, the fluidity of the terrain is one of the least weird things about Sigil," Baeloth darkly informed them.

Silence fell across the room once again, heavy and oppressive. The dark-skinned elf shifted uncomfortably, and tried to break the silence. "Have heart, my friends! There are obstacles in your path, yes, but the way back home is not lost forever! Share a meal with my wife and I, and then sleep; in the morning, we can discuss ways to get you all back on your feet and making progress towards finding your way back to your own world. I promise you, I will help you to escape the Cage."

"...Thanks, Baeloth. We appreciate it," Ranma slowly replied.

"Yeah, we're going to owe you for this," Ukyo agreed.

"Shampoo thank you; you is too-too nice, Mr. Elf," Shampoo added, smiling a sad smile.

"We appreciate your assistance," Nabiki concluded, and she actually meant it. To be frank, she was so shell-shocked she couldn't even bring herself to start waiting for the other shoe to drop.

The sound of chiming bells echoed through the study at that moment, prompting Baeloth to look up. "Ah, that would be dinner. Please, join my wife and I?"

Truth be told, none of the teens were really feeling hungry... but they knew they needed the meal, and frankly, it was a little bubble of normality in a day that had been anything but.

As one, they rose from their chairs and followed Baeloth to the dining room. Still, dinner - an alien affair of savory meat-and-mushrooms-in-gravy wrapped in baked pastry, of all things, served alongside an assortment of baked tubers - was a sombre affair.

After dinner, there came the little problem of cleaning up. Sadly, as magical as Sigil evidently was, it still lagged behind Tokyo when it came to little things like indoor plumbing - bathing required pumping cold water from an interior well into a copper tub and then heating it to a suitable temperature. Baeloth explained that there were magical alternatives, but houses where those were standard features lay outside of the financial level he and his wife lived at.

At least they were wealthy enough to afford an indoor toilet, rather than having to use an outside cesspit like the poorer denizens of Sigil! Fortunately, the elf was indeed a spellcaster - as if they hadn't had proof of that during his lecture! - and a simple prestidigitation cantrip could instantly change a tub of cold water into a lovely steamy hot bath.

Once the four teens had each taken their turn at bathing - because like hell any of them were going to bathe together; that was an intimacy none of them trusted each other for, they were more than ready to go to bed.

Which was when yet another of life's little inconveniences reared its ugly head...

"...When they said 'guest bedroom', I kind of expected a bit more distinction between the room and the bed," Ranma confessed, staring at the basement room they had been led to.

As well he might; there was no bed, or even a futon. A single sprawling mass of pillows and blankets dominated the room; not too different in spirit from a futon, fundamentally, but different in one key aspect. Whereas a set of four futons could give each teen their private space, this mass of bedding was essentially going to push them all into a single shared bed.

"Well, we make do. Not look uncomfortable," Shampoo chirped happily, her cheer sending an instinctive shiver of fear down Ranma's back.

"Um... maybe I should camp outside tonight? I mean, the roof was nice and flat, I'm sure they won't mind..." Ranma suggested, trying not to look like he was inching away from his fiancées.

"Oh, stop it, Ranma," Nabiki suddenly interjected, making the other teens look at her in surprise. "Despite what Akane might say in moments of anger or paranoia, none of us believe you would ever try anything funny with a girl. We all trust you to be a perfect gentleman in a situation like this."

"That's right, Ranma-honey," Ukyo added, smiling to herself as she nodded in agreement.

"Is too-too true; Ranma most noble and honorable man Shampoo know," the Joketsuzoku interjected.

Despite his best efforts to appear unmoved, and even with the natural caution that Ranma had developed over his long weeks in Nerima, Ranma still puffed up a little at the ego-stoking he was receiving from three lovely young ladies... hey, as much as he complained about the engagements, and as well as he could control himself, he **was **still a healthy red-blooded youth!

'_Heh, I bet he thinks that's a poker face,'_ Nabiki smirked to herself. It was weirdly adorable how Ranma thought he was so great at doing the macho aloof manly man thing... which was why she said next slipped out, since it was just so much fun to burst Ranma's bubbles. "If anything, your honor is probably in more danger from them."

Ranma flinched away, and beads of nervous sweat began to prickle Nabiki's skin as she felt a sudden wave of warmth emanating from Ukyo.

"And just what do you mean by that...?" Ranma's bifauxnen fiancée asked in an icy tone, drumming her fingers against her bicep.

In an odd reversal from that morning, Shampoo was the one who seemed to take Nabiki's words in stride. "What? Ukyo no want enjoy husband in proper wifely manners?" she teased her primary rival.

"I-That's not! Gah!" Ukyo spluttered, blushing at the Chinese Amazon's insinuations. "How can you be so calm about what she just said about us?!"

"What there to get upset about? Shampoo do want enjoy Ranma's body... more wonder why Nabiki not include herself in that statement," The Joketsuzoku noted, and now it was her turn to cast an evil eye at the resident Tendo daughter.

'_What kind of mind does she have?'_ Nabiki wondered to herself, but the thought was swiftly drowned out by the intense desire to avoid provoking both of her "rivals" to hostility. Putting on her best disarming smile, she held up her hands in a placating gesture. "Whoa, hey now, I'm not involved in this! I've got no interest in your Ranma!" she assured them.

The object of their discussion scoffed, "Could have fooled me, with the Shampoo impression you were pulling yesterday," he drawled with a raised brow. "I never would'a pictured you as the kind of girl to get so... touchy-feely."

'_Are you __**trying **__to get me killed?!'_ Nervous sweat burst from Nabiki's temples, pouring down her face as she hastily waved her hands at the glowering - and glowing - martial artists. "Seriously, it's not what you think!"

"Then what is it, Nabiki Tendo?" Ukyo growled, hand inching towards her battle spatula.

For the barest moment, Nabiki hesitated... then, common sense, having had a recent reality check in the face of just how crazy these girls could be, provoked her into going with the one gambit that none of them could have expected: the truth. "I was just trying to mess with my sister!"

"You what?!" Ranma yelped indignantly, but none of the girls were paying attention at that moment. Instead, Ukyo and Shampoo simply stared at her. "Explain," Shampoo demanded.

"As much as I love my sister... she does need to be taken down the occasional peg. And after what had happened last night, I was really in the mood to give her a reality check," Nabiki began.

"What'd she do?"

"Threw a tantrum and smashed the second-story balcony we were standing on. If Ranma hadn't miraculously decided to save me... I could have gotten hurt pretty badly," Nabiki confessed.

"Whaddya mean, 'miraculously'? Like I said to Akane, you don't have any martial arts training - I couldn't just let you fall!" Ranma interjected.

"Most people, Ranma, would have saved their fiancée first and left her bitchy sister to fend for herself," Nabiki dryly retorted. "I mean, I'm not complaining that you saved me! Just... I never would have expected it. And when I saw Akane just keep throwing her tantrum, slapping you across the face for saving me and telling you that you and I ought to be engaged instead... well, I thought she deserved a little payback," Nabiki shrugged haplessly as she spoke.

"Wait, she did what? And that's how you and Ranchan got engaged?" Ukyo blurted out, her original angry glare now replaced by an incredulous stare.

"Akane real bitch," was Shampoo's succinct situational summary. "But why Nabiki decide to become Ranma fiancée?"

"I'm going to be honest with you, ladies; Akane's my sister, and I love her, and that means I'm supposed to be rooting for her to win your little love war. But that doesn't mean I don't get sick of her acting like a tsundere child - the constant tantrums, refusing to admit she likes him even as she gets so upset when she thinks he's not interested in her, it all gets tiresome," Nabiki explained, letting a bit of her legitimate exhaustion with Akane's antics show for a rare moment. '_...Huh; this actually feels really good, to finally let somebody else in on the secret,' _she absently noted to herself.

"Try living with it," Ranma retorted, his voice dry enough to empty a sea. Ordinarily, he'd have been a lot more interested in that little suggestion that Akane really did like him... pity it had been such a long and trying day; he was all burned out, on the emotional level.

Ignoring him, Nabiki continued, "So, I thought I'd try and scare her a little. Make her think that she really could have a chance of losing Ranma, and then give him back to her - maybe I could even get her to finally admit out loud that she wants him in the process, but mostly I was just looking to make her sweat."

"And what if Ranma-honey decided he preferred you to your sister, hmm?" Ukyo asked icily.

"Oh, please!" Nabiki scoffed, confident enough she even managed to make a faint laugh at the idea. "There is no way I'm on Ranma's radar, not when he has girls like you and my sister around him."

When Shampoo and Ukyo both preened at the implicit compliment, Nabiki felt relief wash over her... right up until Shampoo spoke again.

"Still nasty trick to play on Ranma... and why you selling him, then?"

"Hey, if he's going to be my fiancé, even if it's only my fake fiancé, then it's okay for me to make a little profit off of him, isn't it?" Nabiki asked, using her most innocent tone and winning expression to try and coax the Chinese Amazon to her side of things.

"No," was the flat response from Ranma, Ukyo and Shampoo, delivered with pitch-perfect unison and making Nabiki's face fall.

Ranma looked at the chamber, looked at the girls, and then sighed mournfully. "...Can you girls promise you'll behave? We still need to work together - now more than ever - if we're going to get home. Wrecking our host's house or strangling each other ain't gonna help."

"Do you really think we'd be that stupid?" Ukyo asked, hurt and incredulity mingled in her words as she stared dumbfounded at her fiancé.

Ranma's silence was deafening, leaving both Ukyo and Shampoo to hang their heads in shame. Of the two, Shampoo was the first to look back at Ranma again, looking him straight in the eyes as she solemnly said, "We promise to be too-too good girls, Airen. No fighting, working together. We show you we can listen to you."

"What she said," Ukyo agreed.

Ranma looked at them both, and then sighed again. "Alright. Then I'll sleep here for the night," he reluctantly agreed. He turned away from the girls, pretending not to see the jubilant smiles on two faces at his decision. Sliding beneath the covers, he still made a point of pressing himself up against the wall, with his back to the girls.

Refusing to be put off by this, Ukyo and Shampoo glanced at the space nearest to Ranma, and then at each other. Nabiki watched as they silently eyed each other up, waiting to see them break their promise already... she was quite surprised when instead they nodded as one before grabbing her and shoving her into the bed. "What are you doing?" she hissed at them.

"Need time to prove us to Ranma. You say you no want Ranma, so you be buffer," Shampoo replied.

Nabiki wanted to argue their point... but, it actually did make sense. Besides, it had been a long and emotionally stressful day; she was wrung out and just wanted to sleep. So she wormed her way under the covers, trying not to get too close to Ranma, and closed her eyes, attempting to get to sleep despite the unfamiliar sensation of being surrounded on both sides by foreign bodies.

It said wonders for just how exhausted she was that, despite the alien environment and unimaginable situation, she soon found herself drifting off to sleep...

* * *

**Chapter End & Closing Notes**

* * *

And so we come to the end of our first chapter! I do apologize for the somewhat slow-burn, but even Ranma 1/2 needs a little building up - and, in the case of a setting as complex as this, a certain amount of info-dumping - before we can start really cutting loose with the craziness that comes from turning Ranma and his little harem loose on Sigil.

If you've come here from my earlier Ranma/Nabiki work, "Heated Storm Yields A Wild Horse's Heart", you may be wondering if this story is not going to feature any chance of Ranma/Nabiki, given the final section of this chapter. Without giving anything away, at least hopefully, that's not the case. Nabiki told Ukyo and Shampoo that she's not in love with Ranma and the whole thing was a plan to mess with her sister because... well, that's how it started, and right now she's genuinely scared of Ranma's other fiancées because she's just been reminded that they are both volatile in temperament and physically dangerous to her. If she is attracted to Ranma, she's certainly not going to tell them! No, better to play up the whole "I was never serious about this" angle to keep them pacified, that's what she's thinking.

Now, Planescape fans are going to be in an uproar over the use of the World Axis instead of the Great Wheel. I'm sorry, but I have my reasons, not least of which is that I legitimately prefer the Axis to the Wheel. I don't want to go on a rant here, but suffice it to say that TSR's Planescape was always, to me, a great idea that wasn't executed well, with Black Isle's Planescape: Torment doing the setting far more justice than the splatbooks did. Just... give this fic a chance, you might just be surprised.

And to all D&D fans who were wondering: yes, Baeloth and Weltha are a drow and a duergar, respectively. The angle here is that whilst Ukyo knows enough D&D lore to sometimes provide a valuable clue, she doesn't remember it well enough to be able to suck the mystery out of the setting. Plus, it makes for a nice little comic misunderstanding, and emphasizes their status as Primes - if not "Clueless".


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Notes:** Thank you all for the warm welcome! I was worried, given some of the controversies surrounding my personal preferences in D&D and Ranma both, but I'm glad readers seem to be liking this! Apologies for the delay in a new chapter, but real life decided it would be fun to throw some huge curveballs my way and... yeah, it's been a pain.

The Astartes: Yeah, Planescape was (in theory) the first of the major D&D settings to really stray far away from the "humans and demihumans in the mainstream" focus of TSR's worlds. In practice, it wasn't so good at it, but you will definitely see much more varied races and creatures here than you would in a typical Ranma/Forgotten Realms or Ranma/Greyhawk crossover! In fact, you might be interested in checking out the article "List of D&D PC Races" on 1d4chan - the wiki's language can be crude, but it's the single biggest depository of online lore for the many, MANY different PC races that have been part of D&D since its inception!

Crescent Pulsar: Yeah, on reflection, I maybe could have handled Ukyo's "lore dumping" better in the first chapter. But, in fairness, it's intentional that she's going to get some stuff wrong, since she's working on dimly remembered memories of a Japanese translation of AD&D 1st edition (as filtered through a group of typical Japanese nerds), and the world I'm playing with is basically D&D 4th edition, absorbing things I like from many other settings and editions. In particular, I hope you'll find Ukyo's explanation for how she got confused by Baeloth and Weltha's races in this chapter acceptable.

WoodXVII: Well, in fairness, most Planescape fans would denounce what I'm working with as not being "real" Planescape in the first place, which is one of the reasons I used the "Homebrew" world-tag. But I'm still glad you like it and I hope you enjoy the fic to come!

Death of Snipers: It's tricky to really gauge Ranma & co's power level, to be honest. It's hard to even compare them to other shonen anime, since Ranma 1/2 fluctuates between being an action show and a comedy show. This probably doesn't help you, but on 4e's Tiers scale (three tiers of 10 levels, with godhood lying beyond the 30th), I'd call them High Heroic (8-10) to Low Paragon (11-13); from a D&D perspective, they're Medium+ Fish in a Tiny Pond, if that helps? "Generic" type foes will not stand much of a threat, but they're not going to just run rampant over the setting, either. As for your other questions... well, you'll see the answers in-chapter, hopefully.

* * *

_**Chapter 2: Losing (Finding?) One's Way**_

* * *

One might have expected Ranma to be the first of the four teens to waken, given his rather tense relationship with having any girl in close proximity to him back in Nerima, never mind three of them at once.

However, one failing that Ranma had in common with his father, and one that Ranma would actually admit to sharing, albeit reluctantly, was this: Once Ranma fell asleep, he was a naturally deep sleeper. Despite years of training by Genma to overcome this weakness, Ranma just couldn't normally spring awake - once he fell asleep, he went out like a light. Genma had ultimately resigned himself to simply teaching his son the art of intuitive sleep defense, allowing Ranma to dodge attacks without even waking up to do so.

No, the first of the four lost teens to awaken was Shampoo. Whilst Nyuchiehzu was not, as some of the bigots around Nerima had proclaimed, still caught in the Stone Age - they had their own printing press, running water, indoor plumbing, phone lines and electricity, thank you very much - it was an agricultural community in a very rural part of the world.

Life for a Joketsuzoku began at dawn, and even a professional Warrior like Shampoo was expected to pull her weight; there was wood to chop, laundry to do, seeds to sow, harvests to take in, snares to check, wild game to be hunted, eggs to be collected, livestock to feed, milk and butcher... and then there was the matter of training and sparring!

Moving to the city had lightened the load of her chores, but not as much as one might suppose; at the Nekohanten, Shampoo's morning tasks included cleaning, taking inventory, shopping and cooking - and all that before the shop opened for actual business!

So it was that, on pure instinct and conditioning, Shampoo was the first of the quartet to open her eyes on their first morning in Sigil. In that foggy state of the newly awakened, she felt the warmth of a body partially under hers, a heartbeat gently echoing in her ear, and she immediately leapt to the understandable conclusion.

"Ranma?" she asked softly, sitting up and looking to the face of her impromptu mattress... only to pout as she realized that she'd actually been cuddling up to Ukyo, who was lying there sleeping on her back.

'_Well, that's a waste of a damn fine dream...'_ Shampoo mentally grumbled to herself.

Even as she was thinking that, Ukyo stirred, moaning softly before she opened her eyes, though whether she was awakened by her own shopkeeper's conditioning or Shampoo's gaze, who could say? She blinked up at Shampoo, staring at her levelly, and then commented in a flat tone, "If you strangle me, Ranchan will know it was you."

Shampoo nearly fell over in shock at her rival's words. "W-what you talking about?! Shampoo not thinking that!" she hissed, barely remembering to keep her voice down at the last moment.

"Then why are you hovering over me?" Ukyo dryly quipped back.

"Shampoo just wake up!" The Chinese Amazon retorted indignantly. "Where you come up with this stuff?"

"Yesterday, you tried to chop Nabiki's head off in the middle of the schoolyard. Gonna be a **long **time before you live that down, China girl."

Shampoo fumed, fingers curling themselves into dainty fists of rage. '_Still... stupid Ukyo has a point,'_ she reluctantly conceded to herself. She forced herself to take a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. "Shampoo understand. But Shampoo promise truce, and Shampoo mean it. Shampoo just up because this always time of morning when Shampoo get up for restaurant. Why Ukyo up?" she asked, to try and emphasize her attempt to be civil.

Ukyo stared warily at her, but the apparent sincerity of her Chinese rival prompted her to reply in a similar manner. "Same reason. This's about the time I'd have to get up and start getting the restaurant in order before I go to school."

"Ah," Shampoo said, nodding with a knowing expression. She cast a glance over to the side, shoulders slumping as she made out the almost completely hidden form of Ranma, pressed up against the wall with Nabiki as a human shield between him and his real fiancées. "So... what you want do? Try and get back to sleep?" Shampoo suggested, with a tilt towards Ranma.

"...It's tempting, but nah," Ukyo slowly replied with a small look of longing towards the boy in their midst. "Maybe we can find the kitchen and start getting a start on breakfast? Weltha could probably use a pair of hands in her condition."

"That sound good to Shampoo," the Joketsuzoku agreed, nodding chipperly. '_Maybe making a delicious breakfast will help Ranma start forgetting about yesterday...'_

Getting to the kitchen was actually easier said than done. The hallways were dark as a moonless night, and whilst both girls had superior senses to the untrained individual, that didn't mean they had a pair of night vision goggles strapped to their heads. They bumped into things and tripped repeatedly, muffling curses until finally, by sheer luck, they swung open a door into what was unmistakably a kitchen.

"Well, you're up early," Weltha noted from where she was tending to a black iron stove, one slung low to the ground and clearly made for somebody of her relatively diminutive stature.

"Oh! Good morning, Mrs. Ryltar. Yes, we're used to getting up earlier. We were wondering if maybe you would like a hand with making breakfast? I know how hard it must be to have so many new mouths to feed," Ukyo said, bowing apologetically for emphasis.

"Well, aren't you a polite young girl? A hand would be most welcome. Come in, come in," the dam said, beckoning them inside.

The kitchen was at once strange and familiar, though less of the former and more of the latter to Shampoo. To their politely suppressed surprise, they found themselves assigned to peeling and dicing potatoes or washing and chopping mushrooms, whilst Weltha busied herself with meat and eggs. Evidently, meals at the Ryltar home tended to be fried more often than not - an odd thing, from their perspective, but neither was rude enough to comment on it. After all, this wasn't Japan or China; why should food here be done in Japanese or Chinese styles?

Besides, they had to admit, the sliced and whole sausages, bacon, eggs, mushrooms and potatoes smelled delicious as they sizzled away. Weltha tossed them all around in a massive iron skillet that looked like somebody had tried to make a wok out of plate steel, and then given up halfway through. "Ukyo? Might I ask you a question?" she said, not taking her eyes off of the frying meal.

"Sure? What is it?" Ukyo replied, curious as to what Weltha could be curious about.

"Why did you think I was an elf? Are dwarves so rare on your world?"

Ukyo couldn't help a self-depreciative laugh. "They don't exist! Years ago, I was part of a group that played a game called Dungeons & Dragons; everything I know about elves and dwarves and orcs and goblins and whatever else comes from that, or at least what little I remember of it," she explained.

"Truly? Odd indeed... but that doesn't quite explain your mistake," Weltha noted wryly.

"Well... it's been a while since I read any of those books, but female dwarves weren't exactly prominent in them. Dwarves were kind of summed up as angry beards on legs. Angry, **beer-soaked**, beards on legs," she amended herself.

Weltha actually laughed at that. "A fairer assessment than you might think. But, truly? Nothing on dwarven women at all?"

"I... think I remember something about dwarf women having beards and otherwise looking exactly like dwarf men unless you got their trousers off?" Ukyo sheepishly confessed.

"Obviously, that part was total rubbish!" she hastily added at a growing frown on her hostess's face.

"Very much so," Weltha grumbled. Whatever else one could say about her, the she-dwarf's gender was very much self-evident. "Thank you... truly, the multiverse is a strange place indeed. I never would have dreamed of such a world, it must be very lonely... in thanks, let me tell you something that my husband has seen fit to keep to himself."

"What that?" Shampoo asked, directing an inquisitive stare at her hostess.

"There are elves and dwarves... and then there are _elves _and _dwarves_," Weltha explained darkly.

It was a perfect poignant sentence... undercut when a baffled Shampoo replied, "What that mean?"

Weltha looked at her suspiciously, clearly suspecting mockery. Seeing nothing but honest confusion from her guests, the she-dwarf sighed. "You two are both humans, but come from different lands, correct?"

"That's right. Ranchan, Nabiki and I are Japanese, and Shampoo here is Chinese," Ukyo replied.

"Well, elves and dwarves come in different...branches, too you can say. My husband is a drow elf, and I am a duergar dwarf," Weltha explained.

"Those names... I think I heard them before... some module... ahah!" Ukyo snapped her fingers. "The Queen of the Spiders! Drow and duergar are the elves and dwarves of the deepest underground regions; they are... are... obviously nothing like what the game says," Ukyo quickly corrected herself.

"Why do you say that?" Weltha asked with a raised brow.

"Well... in the game..." Ukyo hesitantly began. "Both races were kind of... evil? The drow were sort of these... demon-worshippers, and the duergar were... skulking, slaving thieves?"

"Whilst the latter is very much inaccurate," Weltha observed in an icy tone, "The former is surprisingly true," she conceded with grudging difficulty.

"But... you not evil. You too-too nice!" Shampoo interjected with a concerned tone.

"My husband and I are... different," Weltha said slowly, her expression troubled as she leaned on the table. "On the planes, you will find the exceptions to the rule with far greater frequency. But... neither of our peoples are shining bastions of light. My husband feared your wrath if he explained this, but I felt it was better to get it out in the open now, lest you mistake our caution for some devious trick."

The two teenage girls looked at each other, then nodded. "Thank you for your honesty," Ukyo said. "We'll explain things to Ranma and Nabiki... you've been nothing but kind to us; we owe you a great debt."

"Thank you, girls... now, breakfast is almost ready, so you had best go and wake those friends of yours up. Nothing worse than starting the day on a cold breakfast, not in Sigil," Weltha declared firmly.

Since their help was clearly no longer required in the kitchen, Ukyo and Shampoo were grateful for the excuse to leave. Once they were outside the kitchen, Shampoo grabbed Ukyo's arm and hissed into her ear, "How you not know what they are?"

"Give me a break, I haven't played D&D since I moved to Nerima! Besides, all I really remember about that module were those perverts drooling over the big-tittied chocolate-skinned elf-woman on the cover," Ukyo snapped back. "The other stuff kind of faded into the background."

"...That make sense," Shampoo conceded. Letting go of Ukyo's arm, she asked, this time in a louder voice, "So, how you think we wake up Ranma?"

"You really think Ranchan will need to be told twice that there's food?" Ukyo smirked.

Despite everything, Shampoo giggled, "That true. Airen have too-too healthy appetite..."

* * *

In fact, it had actually proven harder to wake Nabiki than it had to wake Ranma, given the Tendo girl's absolute distaste for the very existence of the early morning. The high-pitched and distinctly girlish scream that a bleary-eyed Ranma had unleashed after seeing Nabiki curled up in bed next to him whilst he was still half-asleep had ultimately worked - and been absolutely hilarious, in the opinions of Shampoo and Ukyo.

The quartet had made their way to the dining room, where the mismatched husband and wife were already sitting down to a table set for a meal. Ranma needed no invitation to start tucking in, and the girls quickly joined him. This "Western style" breakfast was an unusual affair for them, but as odd as it looked, it tasted divine.

"Mmm! My compliments, Mrs. Ryltar; this is really good," Nabiki said, dabbing at the corner of her mouth for crumbs.

"Nothing like a good fry up with plenty of grease and salt to get you through the day," the dwarf beamed proudly, before biting into an open-topped sandwich of eggs, bacon and sausage on toasty bread.

The meal was conducted in an amiable silence; the four guests trying their hardest to be polite in front of their hosts, who in turn seemed content to simply focus on eating rather than trying to mix in conversation. It wasn't until the last morsels had been consumed and the plates stacked up on the end of the table that Baeloth finally spoke.

"I have to go to work soon, my friends, but as I promised last night, I will give you whatever help I can to get you all on your feet. Do you have any questions for me before I leave?" the drow wizard asked, with a quick glance at the household clock.

"Let's start with an obvious one; who runs Sigil? What kind of laws do we need to be careful of while we're here?" Nabiki promptly replied.

Baeloth's expression grew thoughtful, and he rubbed his chin. "That is actually a surprisingly complex question, Ms. Nabiki. Sigil has always been a rowdy community, but things have gotten somewhat worse, recently. For several thousand years, Sigil was ruled over by a consortium of fifteen cabals, the Factions, who divided up the civil and social functions of running Sigil between them. But, approximately two or three centuries ago, they fought a bitter internecine war that devastated Sigil, and were driven from its halls. Since then, Sigil has been even more lawless than usual. I suppose the simplest way to put it is that Sigil operates under the maxim of 'look out for yourself'. Consider us the multiverse's equivalent of a wild frontier town; law and order are personal affairs here, maintained by respect, caution and strength."

"...How does that even work?!" an appalled Nabiki cried at the idea that an entire city could be reduced to functioning like the Nerima ward.

"No, no, I think I get it," Ranma interjected hurriedly to prevent a Nabiki meltdown. "Basically, people don't mess with you if you look tough enough, and expect the same courtesy, am I right?"

"In a geode," Baeloth replied, grinning at Ranma's evident wits. "Of course, people like to dress it up in a nicer outfit than that, but that's what it boils down to. Of course, the different Wards appear more or less lawless depending on their very nature - the open anarchy and thuggery of the Hive is a far remove from the Lady's Ward, where the nobles maintain private armies of guards to soundly dissuade any attempts at theft or violence, for example. Still, looking strong, or clearly aligning yourself with those who are strong, is the best way to protect yourself and your belongings."

"And people just put up with this?" an incredulous Ukyo asked. '_I got enough trouble managing business with the craziness I have to deal with in Ranma's orbit...how could an entire city possibly function like this?'_

"Most have known nothing else," Baeloth shrugged, taking their objections in stride. They'd learn the beat of the city or they'd fall back in the pit. "Besides, it is not as terrible as you may be thinking. It is true that violence and theft are frequent, if not facts of life in some parts of the city, but at the same time, Sigil is one of the freest civilizations in the multiverse. You will find that tyranny and oppression of any form rarely maintains much of a stronghold here."

"But there really no leaders here?" Shampoo questioned.

"There are the Sons of Mercy, who attempt to fill the role of a city watch and a court of justice... but they have no greater authority than that which they can earn through strength of arms, and their numbers are relatively few; they're essentially a civic minded gang. There is also the Sigil Advisory Council, which attempts to provide some level of civil organization and harmony to Sigil, but, again, their influence is limited and mostly relies on bribery and strong-arming," Baeloth admitted with a shrug. "No, Sigil has only one leader, and she does not care for the minutia of governing. So long as you respect her one law, you may do as you please."

"Ahah! I knew there had to be somebody in charge!" Nabiki crowed; a leader meant someone with levers, as far as Nabiki was concerned. "Who is she, and what does she want?"

To the surprise of the lost Nerimans, Baeloth shuddered, and even Weltha grew pale, placing a protective hand over her pregnant belly. "That... is something we must be very quiet about. The ruler of Sigil is feared by all; we dare not say her name casually, for fear she may hear us. I will not repeat this, so listen well: Sigil bows only to one, and that is Her Bladed Serenity; the Lady of Pain," he shivered again, fingers twisting through what was obviously a warding gesture.

"She's that bad?" Ranma asked. Baeloth's body language wasn't casual fear, or even superstitious dread; it was a deep, rooted knowing of danger that was bordering on primal.

"Not bad... but not good, either. Indifferent. Her Bladed Serenity keeps Sigil from boiling over, or being conquered by the power blocs of the multiverse, and she does so by being powerful enough to keep all of them at bay. You may go your entire life without seeing her, but you will never forget it if you do; a giant, seemingly human woman, her head wreathed in a mantle of blades that grows from her very flesh, who floats serenely through the air and passes through walls and buildings as if they weren't there..." Baeloth explained, looking haunted as he did so.

"She powerful?" Shampoo asked, feeling more than a little stupid even as she asked the question.

"Her Bladed Serenity has been challenged by many foes over the eons. Gods, archdevils, demon princes, primordials, wizard-kings, fey lords, aberrations... monsters and masters of every kind. And she has destroyed them all, without so much as a scratch," Baeloth replied grimly. "If you anger Her, then She may punish you in one of two ways. If She feels merciful, She will simply imprison you in a Maze - a labyrinthine demiplane with a concealed exit, where you will be left to rot for all time, unless you can escape."

"And if she doesn't feel merciful?" Ukyo prompted.

"Then She will cast Her shadow over you. Flaying, we call it. Skin and meat will peel themselves from your bones, flensed by an armory of unseen knives. And the cuts go down to your very soul... no magic known can restore someone whom She has flayed to death," the drow wizard warned.

"Oh, come on; you sure you're not exaggerating a little?" Ranma asked, more out of a personal issue with the idea that anyone was too powerful to take down, even if only in concept.

Baeloth simply gave him a haunted look. "I would not risk it. I remember the story of Aoskar too well to even dare."

"Aoskar?" Shampoo repeated, a frown growing on her face for how she seemed reduced to parroting everyone's words.

"A god who tried to claim dominion over portals and teleportation thousands of years ago. His worship spread through Sigil like wildfire; one of the dabus even converted to his cause and became a priest! And that was when he broke the One Law of Sigil: Don't Anger Her Bladed Serenity. Witnesses who were there state that one day, as Aoskar was holding court, he suddenly died horribly, eviscerated from the inside out by a million-million blades. At the same time, every lay worshipper and cleric he had across the known multiverse suddenly vanished, either swallowed by a Maze or flayed in the same manner, whilst his great temple in Sigil was spontaneously leveled! And all of this happened in a single night, leaving behind just one Aoskite; the dabus-priest, now known only as Fell," the drow wizard elaborated.

Silence fell over the dining room as the four lost teens digested the implications of what they had been told. Their faces grew pale as they considered the kind of hideous power it would take to achieve the feats they had been told. Instinctively, Nabiki turned to Ranma. "You are _**not **_to pick a fight with her, Ranma!" she ordered him.

"Just how _**stupid **_do you think I am?!" was Ranma's incredulous cry.

"Too-too scary!" Shampoo whimpered.

"So... what actually makes her mad?" Ukyo asked, pushing through her horror to concentrate on how to survive.

"Unfortunately, that's not easy to explain. Her Bladed Serenity can be... fickle," Baeloth replied, sending shivers down the four teens' spines. "In general, though, she only cares about the well-being and stability of Sigil. Simple murder or theft is beneath her attention; she reacts to widespread disruptions and attacks with far-reaching impact, or the deliberate flouting of the few decrees that she has deigned to make in the past."

"So... if someone were to, say, smash a building?" Nabiki asked nervously, casting concerned glances at her companions. Initially, this confused them, but then understanding dawned and the trio of martial artists frowned angrily at her.

"She would probably ignore that. Buildings come and go. Trying to level the entire city? **That **would get Her attention," Baeloth explained, giving the group a judicious glance. "Aside from that, She mostly reacts to those who try to interfere with the city's portals. Destroying them, monopolizing them, or otherwise drastically meddling with their usage is a proven way to draw Her wrath."

The drow shook his head. "Really, unless you have plans of trying to conquer or destroy the city, She will simply ignore you, as She does all of us." he added reassuringly

"That's a relief... thanks, Baeloth," Ranma replied with a sigh of relief; he didn't trust his luck that just trying to survive wouldn't get him turned into chutney if property damage pissed off the head honcho.

"Do you have any other questions for me?" the drow asked, getting to his feet.

"Best make them quick ones; you have to be off soon, dear," Weltha interjected as she brought him a russak that smelled faintly of food.

"Then we'll be brief; how easy is it to find work in Sigil?" Nabiki replied; if wealth and strength were what mattered in this society, the others could handle being muscleheads, she'd handle getting them enough money to get off the street and in full bellies.

"Very much so! The vast majority of Sigil's population is transitory, so there's always positions open for those looking for work."

"But I suspect it's usually concentrated in fairly low-reward professions?" The middle Tendo interjected.

"Well... yes, that is true," Baeloth admitted slowly. "Even in Sigil, one can't realistically expect to walk in off of the street and get a high end, high paying job. The closest one would get is as an adventurer... and that tends to be the definition of high risk, high reward employment,"

"Of course it would be," Nabiki grumbled with a roll of her eyes. "Where can we start looking for work?"

"There are two primary alternatives for that," Baeloth rattled off. "Firstly, go to the Lower Ward and simply ask around; there's always a need for laborers in the factories or barmaids in the taverns..."

"Pass," Nabiki flatly declared, suppressing a shiver. '_I don't mind turning on the charm to wheedle money out of some fool's pocket, but I'm not going to be waiting on a bunch of drunken brutes with my tits hanging out and letting them play grab-ass for tips...'_

"Or you can go to the Market Ward and check out the job-poles," the drow concluded, as if Nabiki hadn't spoken at all.

"Job poles?" Shampoo asked and if she didn't get to actually contribute a full sentence to the conversation soon she was going to go to this 'Lower ward' and whallop someone.

"A relatively new phenomena, inspired by the great Debtor's Pole. They're literally monuments where people hang up flyers looking for workers or temporary employees of all kinds; if you want to find a place to work, that's the place to look," Baeloth explained. "Now, I'm afraid that I really must go," he said, and rose up from the table.

He stopped to fish around in the pockets of his shirt, and placed a small clinking leather bag and a rolled scroll on the table. "These should help you in your exploration... this is a map of Sigil, with an enchantment to help you better identify where you are and how to get back here - I presume the four of you will need some time before you can move onto your own lodgings," he explained.

"And the bag contains 20 gold pieces, which should be more than enough to help you all acquire food, clothing, or anything else you need today, if you spend it wisely..."

"Mine!"

The drow and the duergar blinked as Nabiki snatched up the bag of coins and made it vanish into some recess of her clothes, the other Nerimans smirking with familiar amusement and a little admiration at her display of speed. Realizing that she was being stared at, Nabiki feigned a cough, the faintest hint of pink dusting her cheeks.

"Sorry - what's the local currency here?" she asked in an effort to take attention off her avarice.

"Sigil sees too many individual currencies to get particularly fancy," Baeloth replied. "We operate on a simple standard here. Our main currencies are copper pieces, silver pieces, and gold pieces. A single silver piece is about a day's wage for the average worker, and is worth 10 copper pieces. A gold piece is worth 10 silver pieces... there's also electrum pieces, which are worth 5 silver pieces, and platinum pieces, which are worth 10 gold pieces, but they're slightly less common. But I'm afraid I really must be off...though I have seen your strength firsthand, and the Market Ward is one of the more law-abiding wards, I suggest you all stick together today as you explore."

And with that, the drow swept out of the dining room, heading for the door, which distantly opened and closed, leaving the four lost Neriman teens behind.

Silence hung over the table, before Ranma shook his head and reached for the map. "Man, we really owe you guys a debt... bit of good luck we ran into folks as nice as you," he told Weltha.

"It's more lucky we ran into people who can speak Japanese," Ukyo quipped, grinning slightly at her lighthearted jest.

"Eh? Japanese? What's that?" Weltha asked, blinking owlishly at her bifauxnen houseguest. Then her gaze sharpened into a probing stare. "Is that your native tongue, young ones?"

"Well, yeah...? What'dya think we're all talking in?" Ranma asked, fidgeting slightly at this sudden turn for the weird...er.

"To me, it sounds like you're all speaking Common. With an accent I can't place," the duergar woman replied.

"...Common?" Nabiki asked, incredulously staring at Weltha.

The dusky dwarfess furrowed her brow, stroking her chin in obvious thought. Then she spoke... and Ranma couldn't make out heads nor tails of the language! He didn't have the formal education to break it down, but it made him think of stone, for some reason - a grumbling, growling sort of language, interspersed with sharp, pronounced noises reminiscent of rock grinding together, and occasionally cracking and splitting. He stared at Weltha dumbfoundedly for a moment, then glanced at his fiancées, who subtly shook their heads; they clearly didn't understand it either.

"Interesting..." Weltha said, and this time they could all make out what she was saying.

"What did you just say? I've never heard a language like that," Ukyo asked.

"I just asked if you could understand me now... but I was speaking in Dwarven, not Common," the duergar explained. "Fascinating... whatever portal you came through seems to have instilled an instinctive understanding of Common in you all, somehow making it intuitive to the point it's replaced your native tongue..."

"Then why Shampoo still sound so stupid?" The Chinese Amazon indignantly protested. Then she stopped, looked thoughtful for a moment, and brightened in sudden cheer, before launching into a stream of what Ranma could tell was clearly Chinese... but no more intelligible to him than it ever was. Evidently, Shampoo caught sight of the guilty look on Ranma's face, as her diatribe sputtered to a halt, and she scowled thunderously.

"Stupid racist magic door..." she complained with a thunderous if adorable pout on her face.

"More evidence, then, that your way here was artificially engineered," Weltha observed.

"You know magic?" Ukyo asked in surprise.

"My husband and I practice somewhat different traditions, but yes, I know my share of the arcane as well," the duergar replied proudly. "Take heart that this will definitely make it easier to track your portal down again in the future - artificial portals to Sigil take some doing to erect, but they remain stable pretty much forever until destroyed on their foreign side."

"That is good news!" Nabiki added, visibly brightening at the thought that they could head back home again.

"Yeah... well, I can read what's on this map, so that magic must let us read Common too," Ranma observed. "Thanks for the food, Mrs. Ryltar, but we should get going and start looking for a job."

"Of course. Now, don't be ashamed if you need to come back and stay again tonight... even in Sigil, you can't expect to just walk in and get a job straight away, especially given the cost of living here," the duergar declared. "But I trust you won't think it rude of me to wish you luck in your search?"

"No, of course not," Ranma chuckled. "C'mon, girls, let's go..."

With that, the quartet of teens rose from the table and made their way towards the front door, throwing it open... and being greeted by a sullen, bitter rainfall.

Ranma slumped against the door. "You have gotta be kidding me!" he complained.

"I'm afraid that Sigil weather tends to be either bad or awful," Weltha announced as she lumbered along behind them. "Our dominant states are fog and rain, although the weather can change wildly and unpredictably. Folks blame it on the portals, the gods... really, anything and everything."

"Well, we can't go out in this," Ranma complained.

"Why not? It's just the Dabus' revenge out there - pretty mild, as this city goes," Weltha explained with a bemused look to the young man.

"Dabus' revenge?" a confused Ukyo asked incredulously.

"Light, constant drizzle and capricious wind - it's one of our more common states of weather," the duergar replied, still confused. "Don't see why it should stop you going out - nobody else will notice."

"Ranma and Shampoo suffer a... unique magical affliction, one that causes them to change forms when exposed to cold water," Nabiki explained. "Which wouldn't normally be a problem, but Ranma... let's say he and Shampoo's alternate form don't get on well," she elaborated.

"Fascinating... I take you'll all be invested in seeking potential cures whilst you're here in Sigil?" Weltha asked, visibly intrigued.

"Wait, that's a thing here?!" Ranma blurted out, practically teleporting right in front of and pinning the duergar in place with an almost mad-eyed hope-fuelled stare.

"Um... yes?" Weltha hesitantly replied, clearly caught off-balance by the intensity of Ranma's response... although he wouldn't be the first person she knew or heard of in Sigil desperate to the point of obsession in getting rid of a curse, magical or imagined.

Ranma stared into nothing, overwhelmed by the realization of what this meant. 'I... I can get cured here? No tricks, no fooling; an honest to gods cure for this stupid damn curse at last?!' His hands curled into fists, fingers tightening in grips that would have broken a lesser man's knucklebones.

Shampoo's reception, in comparison, was far less subdued. She squealed in joy and began hopping up and down in glee, clasping her hands together. "Shampoo no more be cat! Shampoo no more be scaring Ranma!" she cheered at the top of her lungs.

"Congratulations, Ranma-honey!" Ukyo chimed in, beaming with glee at the thought of her fancé finally finding his long-sought cure. Turning back to the duergar, she asked the question she knew Ranma needed to have answered; "Where would we start looking into cures?"

"That depends... mages and priests both deal in curse-breaking," Weltha slowly admitted. Four newcomers, with two of them being cursed? Some powerful being was definitely at work here, and Weltha didn't want to risk the ire of whoever it was. "You'll find more mages-for-hire in the market ward, and temples tend to be concentrated in the Lady's ward. Of course, neither will come cheap... I mean, you might get a mageling who'll drop the price for the sheer novelty of experimenting with an unfamiliar curse... but that might be more trouble than it's worth," she explained.

"Right... well, thank you, Mrs. Ryltar; you've no idea how long I've been searching for something like that," Ranma explained passionately. Then he cast a sour look at the rain beyond his hostess' doorstep. "Still don't know how we're going to get out there and look, though..."

"Well that, my young friend, I can help you with," Weltha replied with a wry grin, before turning and lumbering back into the depths of the house. Minutes later, she returned with an armful of greasy green-gray fabric and a smug grin. "These slipskins should let you go out without any problems," she announced proudly.

Ranma reached uncertainly and grabbed at the topmost fold of fabric, lifting it up and revealing it to be a hooded full-body cloak, clearly meant to be worn over his clothes. "Cloaks?" he asked unthinkingly.

"Enchanted cloaks. There's a glamour embedded in the fabric that will repel water. It won't keep you alive if you try to swim to the bottom of an ocean, but it'll keep all but the most extreme of Sigil's rainstorms from your skin," Weltha explained proudly.

"Where would you get something like this?" An incredulous Nabiki blurted out.

"I make them," Weltha replied simply. "I'm an artificer by profession... crafting low-level enchanted luxury goods is my bread and butter. They're technically not finished, I haven't colored them yet, but I presumed that you wouldn't care about the fashion of them in the face of such dire need."

"You made these? That's awesome!" Ranma replied, already wrapping the cloak around himself with deft ease, the three girls following with slightly less enthusiasm. "I don't know how to thank you..."

"Just try to bring them back in one piece," Weltha replied. "Besides, I do owe you for saving my husband's life - loaning you these to help get you on your feet is the least I can do."

"And we'll always remember it," Ranma assured her. Then he turned to his three fiancées with a vibrant smile that made Ukyo and Shampoo's hearts skip a beat. "Shall we go?" he asked, jauntily flipping up his hood to cover his head.

"Ready when you are, Ranchan," Ukyo assured him, doing the same.

"Shampoo follow you to ends of earth," the Chinese Amazon added as she carefully made sure that the cloak covered her completely.

"Well, it's not like I have a lot of choice," Nabiki quipped, but there was a faint smirk on her face that undercut some of the venom in her words.

"Then let's go!" Ranma announced, before turning and leading his ragtag band of followers out into the streets of Sigil, ready to begin their first real day in the City of Doors.

* * *

**Chapter End & Closing Notes**

* * *

This chapter took a lot longer than I intended, and I'm really sorry about that. And it's also shorter than I'd normally like, but maybe smaller, quicker-to-write chapters might be the way going forward?

Fun little trivia fact: in the manga, Ukyo probably doesn't know about Ranma's ailurophobia - if she does know, I don't know when/where she learned it. I'm not even sure if she knows about Shampoo turning into a cat, considering that she didn't even know Shampoo existed until the events of the Hot Springs Battle Royale arc! In the anime, whilst I'm not sure when she learned about Shampoo's curse (or even if she does know), she evidently does know about Ranma's phobia, since she recognizes what Shampoo is doing with a kitten lurking outside of the Furinkan gym in the events of "Ranma, the Lady-Killer!", which takes place a few episodes before the one where this fic began.

So, in our next chapter, we'll finally be able to start seeing the madness and magic that is Sigil; City at the Center of All. I do hope you'll enjoy it... but, there are some things I want to say.

Firstly; Ranma and the girls need some new outfits, but fashion is very much not on my proficiencies list. If any fans want to suggest some cool new fantasy wardrobes for our heroes to pick up whilst they're out shopping, it would be much appreciated!

Secondly...like "Heated Storm", this fic has an outline rather similar to Ranma 1/2 the canon; a broad end goal that we are heading towards, with the journey along the way being made up of a mixture of mini-sagas and episodic weirdness. And since it's a weird, weird multiverse out there, I thought I'd offer fans an opportunity to get involved in it. Basically, if you want to suggest plot seeds for Ranma & co to encounter as they go from nameless scrubs to blooded badasses, or if you want to suggest "NPCs" - characters that could show up in this fic to flesh out crowd scenes or take up bitpart roles or just play a small part in bringing Sigil and the rest of the World Axis to life? You're welcome to do so!

Now, let me be clear; this doesn't mean I'll accept every suggestion! But there's a certain amount of flexibility in this fic, and I like to both interact with my readers and make it clear that there's a living, breathing world around our heroes, that the multiverse doesn't revolve around them! So, I'm interested in these kind of fan-submissions.

Are there any rules on this matter? Just two: no extra series crossovers, and keep it D&D. Sigil is a weird place; it's the sort of setting where, on paper, there is no problem playing a party made up of an N'djatwa (elf/ogre hybrid), a phanaton (a flying ringtailed lemur person), a saurial (anthro dinosaur), a shardmind (a sapient psionic crystal in humanoid shape), a baphitaur (minotaur tiefling) and a woodrake (anarchist faerie dragon shapeshifter), and I'd have no problems with Ranma & co encountering such a party. But I don't want to bring over characters clearly lifted from other universes - no Ranma butting heads with Sailor Moon over recovering the lost jeweled crown of a moon goddess. As for plot seeds? Again, so long as they don't revolve around making this into a multi-series crossover, I can be quite flexible; Ranma taking up a brief stint as a cranium rat exterminator (harder than it sounds; the rats are psionic hive-mind consciousnesses with an arsenal of offensive powers) is as valid a suggestion as Ranma being hired to play bodyguard to a faerie princess debutante. But, obviously, seed receptions are going to vary depending on how deep down the rabbit hole we've gone and thusly how strong Ranma & company are.

And yes, all of those races I named are genuine player character options from different D&D editions and settings.


	3. Chapter 3

Author's Notes: Sorry for the delays in getting this chapter out, folks; things... got kind of complicated on my end. I'm glad folks are enjoying this fanfic, as odd a concept as it may be. Also, I want to thank folks for not being offended by Ukyo's line vis-a-vis the appeal her old D&D club found in the cover art for Queen of the Spiders.

Death of Snipers: Eh, when it comes to magic, 4e vs. 3e and PF is six of one, half a dozen of the other. They have very different paradigms, most notably in 4e's stark split between battle magic and ritual magic, which is where a lot of the "utility" spells like Knock, Floating Disk, Magic Mouth, Endure Elements and Plane Shift ended up. Ironically, the split means that, in 4e canon, ritual magic can actually do some really crazy shit, because it's not expected to be balanced against your "normal" spells - high level official rituals include "create castle from nothing", "teleport a castle around the world", "create floating island", and "open a permanent doorway through time itself". As for Nabiki learning magic... well, I don't want to spoil things, but I hope you'll like what's coming on that front.

xbox432: I'm glad you liked Weltha and Baeloth so much; I've grown rather fond of them myself.

Van the Rogue Soul Drinker: It's absolutely fine to suggest stuff based on ! I may be using the World Axis (which is actually from 4th edition), but I fully intend to exploit its flexibility by absorbing crazy stuff from across D&D's history and settings. After all, if you can't have N'djatwa (elf/ogre crossbreeds from Mystara), Saurials (dinosaur people from... well, their own world, but they first appeared as part of the Forgotten Realms), Thri-Kreen (originally from the Realms, but nowadays associated with Dark Sun), Warforged (from Eberron), Rougarou (wolf-people who can turn into wolves) and N'kosi (lion versions of Rougarou) sharing the streets of Sigil... well, what's the bloody point of it? Besides, mechanics wise, I'm kind of using the 5e material as a hypothetical framework - I'm not literally statting the characters out or anything, but my editor dislikes 4e mechanics, so I'm using 5e as a "parser" of sorts for him.

Appreciate all the effort folks put into making suggestions!

* * *

_**Chapter 3: Market Day Madness!**_

* * *

The teens from Nerima thought that they knew what to expect from the Market Ward of Sigil.

"Potions! Philters! Potations! Elixirs! Tinctures! Tonics!"

After all, they'd seen their fair share of street markets and supermarkets and, for at least two of their number, village markets and farmer's markets; how different could a market be, even in a topsy-turvy city like Sigil?

"Cheese! Try my cheese! Made from the finest milks across the multiverse! Cow milk! Sheep milK! Goat milk! Horse milk! Gorgon milk! Catoblepas milk! Pegasus milk! Such fine cheese!"

They thought it would be a simple in-and-out affair, a minor distraction for the day.

"For sale! Rodents, insects, vermin for sale! Makes a great offering - or a delicious meal!"

...Suffice it to say that they couldn't have been more wrong. The Market Ward was total anarchy; permanent shops rose from amidst a chaotic tangle of temporary stalls and seller's carts like islands in a sea of whirling color. Individual merchants carrying their goods in trays slung around their neck or draped over their forms twisted their way through the crowd, competing with their established neighbors for clientele.

Umbrellas, awnings, tents and canopies stretched across the skyline, keeping out the worst of Sigil's weather, but plunging the streets into darkness, which the merchants countered to the best of their abilities with a hundred different forms of illumination; braziers burning with flames in all the colors of the rainbow, glowing mushrooms, luminescent crystals, dancing balls of light... The air was thick with smoke and chatter, shoppers practically rubbing shoulders as they bustled through the streets.

"Okay... this is more than I was expecting," Ranma admitted, eyes bouncing like expresso fueled ping-pong balls trying to keep track of everything..

"It's almost as busy as Ginza," Nabiki noted, feeling a pang of homesickness at the thought, the sounds of civil and less than civil haggling music to her ears.

"Too-too crowded! ...Where we even start looking?" Shampoo wondered, her eyes bouncing as much as Ranma's but to the weapons and groupings of people armed, not enjoying just how hard it was to keep a plan of defense mentally prepared..

Ranma quickly pulled out the precious map that their hosts had given them and studied it intently. "...Doesn't look like there's any specific shops marked on this," he confessed. "I guess we'll have to just wing it and see where we end up..."

"Well, look on the bright side; it's a day to explore the local market district. What could possibly go wrong there?" Ukyo spoke up, smiling as she did her best to put a positive spin on things. She did her best to ignore Nabiki's flat stare, the Tendo girl's cynicism evidently out in force today.

Clustering together, more out of a desire on Shampoo and Ukyo's part to stay close to their fiancé than any concern for their safety, the quartet picked a direction and set off.

Traveling through the Market was at once eerily familiar and overwhelmingly strange. Familiar, in that the sense of pushing through store-lined streets and almost fighting against the crush of bodies was all too like being back in the shopping markets and street malls of Tokyo. Strange in that as they explored, they were confronted by an endless cavalcade of bizarre beings and creatures that made it quite clear just how far from home they really were. Even the humans often looked more like something from a manga or an anime, with strange colors and weird clothing styles that couldn't be more removed from the Japanese streets they'd left so far behind.

The endless cavalcade of partial conversations washing over them like an audible tidal wave didn't exactly help.

"You know the old saying when it comes to fighting the undead, right? You can cut the flesh, but you must crush the bone?" asked a seemingly human man with skin the color of dark chocolate and a waist-length mane of metallic silver hair. "Well, this beauty can do both!" he continued, brandishing a length of wood tipped with a monstrous mass of metal; an oval sphere of flanged iron with one facet growing out into an axe-like blade.

"But that requires you to be strong enough to actually wield such a monstrous weapon," his companion, a male elf with milk-pale skin and blood red eyes shot back, holding up a helix-shaped length of sharpened steel that glowed with a faint purple flame.. "A light blade, fueled with baleful energies by your own sorcery, is far more effective."

"Magic really is everywhere here, ain't it?" Ranma muttered, even as he led the girls away from the debating warriors.

"Seems like it... you really think you can get a cure here, Ranma-honey?" Ukyo asked, vague memories of curse removal being doable in the DnD books but never being easy.

"Well, it no can hurt to try!" Shampoo declared passionately, eager to dump her own curse of the feline by the roadside.

"Remember what Weltha said," Nabiki interjected in a chiding tone. "Spellslinging is a business here like any others, so before we get off on any half-cocked mission to get your curses cured, we need to find a way to start bringing in some money."

"Yeah, yeah, Nabiki, I..." Ranma suddenly stopped in mid-sentence, having turned partially to face his unwanted Tendo fiancée, before he lunged forward with a shout of, "Oh no you don't!"

Nabiki screamed in fright as Ranma suddenly charged at her. "What are you doing?!" she cried out in fear, Ranma's hand shooting past her so quickly she felt the wind of it ruffle her school dress as... he grabbed somebody that had been beside her!? She hadn't even noticed they were there!

"Gerrof! Lemme go, ya tallfolk berk!" squawked the victim of Ranma's sudden lunge, kicking and flailing in a desperate attempt to escape. For all the good it did, they might as well have been trying to move a mountain; Ranma's fingers were locked around their wrist like an iron manacle.

"Did you really think you could steal from us and get away with it?" Ranma simply spat back, hoisting the would-be thief aloft... which was quite easy, since they were no taller than a ten-year old; a small and grubby figure clad in the tattered remnants of a once-fine formal suit and tophat. It would have been quite easy to mistake them for a human child, pale-skinned, freckle-cheeked, ginger-haired and green eyed... were it not for the rather unchildish lumps stretching the fabric of her shirt.

Of course, Nabiki had other things on her mind than taking in the appearance of yet another Sigil oddity. She was instead frantically rifling through her pockets, and turning up nothing. "You little thief!" she squalled in outrage. "How dare you steal my money!"

"Shoulda watched it better, tallfolk," the diminutive woman jeered at the fuming Tendo daughter from underneath the battered rim of her crooked tophat. "Finders keepers, losers weepers..."

"Which I guess makes you the loser... here, Nabiki," Ranma interjected, tossing the precious bag of gold pieces to her, which she snatched from the air with surprising adroitness.

"Hey, how'd you get that back?!" the little thief protested.

"Same way that I got this," Ranma replied, smirking as he hefted aloft another, larger bag that looked to have originally been some kind of internal organ before it had been split open, tanned, and sewn back up. Its contents jingled and jangled musically as he jiggled it teasingly before the would-be pickpocket's face.

Her eyes went wide, and she frantically patted herself down as best she could with one hand. When she evidently failed to find what she was looking for, she directed a blazing, hateful glare at Ranma.

"Yondalla's fat milky tits!" she spat. "Give those back!"

"Finders keepers, losers, weepers," Ranma taunted her back. "But... I'll give you a choice. Either you can fork this over as payment for trying to rob us..."

"...Or?" the resigned pickpocket grumbled.

"Or, you can become our guide for the day, and we'll not only give you your purse back, we'll give you a gold piece for your troubles," Ranma explained.

"What?!" an indignant Nabiki squawked.

"Oh, come on, Nabiki! I don't mind killing time just exploring, but we do need to actually make those purchases. A local guide's better than just stumbling around blindly all day and then having to find our way back to the Ryltar's'."

"Airen have point," Shampoo agreed.

"Makes sense to me," Ukyo added.

Nabiki grimaced as her two "fellow fiancées" sided with Ranma. '_Of course you'd say that - you just want to suck up to Ranma! ...But, damn it all, he does have a point... when did Ranma grow a brain?'_ she wondered to herself. Finally, she grit out between clenched teeth, "Fine... I guess that makes sense."

"Well, put it like that, I'd have to be a bleeding idiot not to pick option two," the pint-sized pickpocket chimed in. "Now, gimme," she demanded, holding out one hand and clenching it several times.

Ranma simply snorted dismissively in response. "We may be new here, but we're not stupid," he scoffed. "No, you get your money at the end of the day."

And with that he made the bag disappear with a flick of his wrist before unceremoniously dropping their new guide flat on her amply padded rump.

The dirty-faced little thief scowled, rubbing at her sore rear. "What's to stop me from just giving you all the laugh?" she asked bitterly.

"If you try to run, Shampoo will catch you... and she's not as nice as I am," Ranma casually warned her.

Shampoo simply grinned savagely, and began to crack her knuckles, an act that drew an askew glance from Nabiki and Ukyo, who'd never seen her do that before. "Guide no need arms to be guide, right, Airen?" she asked sweetly, giggling as if the concept of dismemberment was some hilarious personal joke.

"Okay, okay, I get it! Call off your pet psycho!" their new guide complained. Standing up, she made a show of brushing herself down and tugging her oft-patched clothes into a better fit. "So, where are we going?" she asked.

"First, you can tell us who and what you are; we need something to call you," Ukyo interjected.

The little woman rolled her eyes beneath the sagging brim of her battered tophat. "I be Molly Milkcurdle, and I be a halfling. You obviously be tallfolk and clueless," she jeered.

"Clueful enough to rip smart tongue from halfling mouth if Molly misuse it," Shampoo chirpily retorted, smiling as if nothing would please her more than to do so.

A sour look flashed across Molly's cherubic face, but she evidently feared to test Shampoo's embraced status as the group's resident monster. "An' what kind of clothes are you after? You can find everything from pawner's racks to noble-cladders here in the Market Ward."

"We want something simple, but nice-looking. Decent quality, but not overpriced junk. Can you do that for us?" Nabiki explained.

The halfling closed her eyes, button nose screwed up as she visibly thought it over. Finally, she nodded to herself and opened her eyes again. "Aye, I can do that for you. Follow me, bigjobs..."

She turned and started walking away with the assurance of a native, and the Nerimian quartet promptly fell in behind her. Ironically, now that they had a guide, in many ways, it was even harder to find their way than before. Not only did they have to keep reminding themselves to look down in order to keep track of her - no small task, given the almost literal undercurrent of similarly sized passers-by that this made them aware of - but every turn of their head turned up some new fantastical scene that enticed them to stop and gawk.

They passed a humanoid mass of shimmering violet crystals in the vague shape of a humanoid woman, playing the faceted protrusions from its body like a cross between a giant wind chime and a one-man band. Then they wove their way around two creatures like mountain goats with the upper torsos of hairy, horned men replacing their necks, which were currently pressed up against each other with their horns locked together as they shouted in each other's faces, gesticulating wildly. They dodged a humanoid squirrel the size of a ten year old, clad in the multicolored motley and jingling bells of a court jester, as it somersaulted through the crowded streets. Enough weirdness to fill a year in Nerima passed in a few minutes, and they knew they were only scratching the surface.

Despite all the temptations, the foursome continued their advance, following the halfling as she led them through the circuitous streets until finally she stopped and turned back to face them. "This be it," she declared, gesturing to the door of a small, two-storey building of wood and brick. A wooden sign hung from a bracket above, depicting a spool of thread overlaid by crossed needles. "Loodra does good work for cheap; she'll sort you out, no problems," Molly assured them.

"Huh... well, we'll be the judge of that. Come on, ladies... and Ranma," Nabiki said, pushing through the door into the shop. Shampoo and Ukyo filed after her, eager to finally have a new change of clothes after having spent the better part of two days in the same outfit, with Ranma bringing up the rear.

"Hey! What about my money?!" Molly protested.

"We didn't just fall off the turnip truck. **If **this place sorts us out, **then **you'll get your money," Ranma replied, before he turned his back to the fuming halfling pickpocket and stepped through into the shop himself.

A tinkling bell announced his presence, and despite himself, Ranma smiled; it was an oddly familiar little touch, and one that reminded him of being back on Earth.

...A pity that the same couldn't be said for the proprietor...

"Well, hello, darlings! Welcome to Loodra's clothing emporium! And how may I help you this day?!" she lowed in delight, flouncing flamboyantly over to the startled quartet, eyes shut and lips curled into an enormous smile that matched the sheer joy in her voice of having somebody to serve.

Since coming to Sigil, Ranma and his three fiancées had seen more than a few "beastpeople" roaming the streets. Not the kemonomimi of manga or anime back in Japan, either, but strange hybrid creatures whose forms more fully blended the elements of man and animal, with heads that bore strangely expressive snouts and bodies covered in fur, feathers, chitinous plates or scales.

Loodra was a bovine beastwoman - emphasis on 'woman'. A long cow's tail flicked cheerfully behind her, emerging from a carefully tailored slit in the rear of her flowing, elegant dress, which hovered just far enough above the floor to provide the occasional glimpse of her hooves as they clopped against the stony floor. Her body was covered in fur; the black-and-white splotched pattern reminding Ranma of milk cows he'd seen in Hokkaido. Surprisingly large horns for a cow emerged from the side of her head, above distinctively bovine ears, with shockingly human eyes of a rich ocean blue peeking from beneath a carefully coiffed mane of golden blonde. All of this made her gender quite apparent, but there was, as it were, two very obvious hints that even a blind man couldn't fail to notice. Especially since Loodra was tall enough that they were just about level with the average person's face.

Nabiki blinked, a tingle running up her spine as she felt somebody touch her. She twisted to look over her shoulder, only to see Ranma was literally trying to hide behind her, pointedly refusing to look at the store-owner, cheeks visibly crimson. '_So, not so invulnerable to women's charms after all, eh, Saotome? ...Not that I supposed I can blame you. Goddamn, she is __**stacked**__...'_

Firmly pushing that traitorous thought aside, and realizing that her female compatriots were in no better shape to speak up - Ukyo was apparently overwhelmed by insecurity, whilst Shampoo had seemingly had a private breakdown at no longer being the biggest girl around - Nabiki cleared her throat and replied to the cow-woman's question. "Hello... we're in the market for some new clothes; we were told you could help us?"

"Oh, but of course, darlings! Loodra's Looms produce only the finest of garbs, everyday and exotic, and all at the most reasonable prices," Loodra assured them, smiling toothily as she clasped her hands in glee. "Come! Tell Loodra what it is that you are desiring?" she asked, tilting her head and giving Nabiki a sincerely intrigued stare.

"We're mostly after a few good suits for everyday wear - we just came to Sigil with nothing but the coin in our pockets and the clothes on our backs," Nabiki explained, hoping to play on the merchant's sympathies.

Her gamble seemed to pay off, because shock and understanding visibly washed over the cow-woman's weirdly expressive face. "Oh, you poor dears! Yes, yes, you have come to the right shop alright! Come, I keep the women's clothing upstairs - your handsome young friend, he will be okay down here looking on his own?" she suggested, giving Ranma a saucy wink as she did.

Nabiki was actually a little impressed that Ranma didn't try to disappear from view by crouching down behind her, but she was still close enough to feel the nervous shiver that went through him at having a woman - even if she did literally look like a cow - saying such flirtatious things to him in front of his notoriously, and violently, jealous fiancées. "I'm sure he'll be just fine, won't you, Ranma?" she asked; the question rhetorical but intended to pull him back to reality.

"Wha? Oh, yeah! Yeah, I'll be fine. Not my first time clothes shopping," Ranma blurted out.

"Excellent! Very well, my lovelies; follow me," Loodra beamed, clapping her hands authoritatively before spinning around and walking over to a staircase against a far wall.

"You heard her, ladies; let's go," Nabiki said, taking the first steps to follow her. She stopped halfway, and then glanced back at them. "You coming?" she asked firmly.

"So jiggly..." Ukyo murmured, before she blinked rapidly and then shook her head. "What? Oh, yes, coming!" she insisted, half-jogging to catch up with Nabiki.

"Shampoo coming too!" the Chinese Amazon insisted, powering after the three of them and up the stairs.

In all honesty, Nabiki wasn't quite sure what she had expected of a Sigil clothing shop, but the sheer resemblance to any clothing shop back in Nerima - completed pieces hanging from racks taking up most of the floor, a few changing rooms at the back - was a comforting bit of familiarity. Even the clothes weren't too strange at first glance, but then, she supposed that there was really only so many ways to make a dress. Even the materials were for the most part ordinary.

Oh, there was some weirdness here and there - a dress made from bluish-black scales that glittered with star-like points of light here, a cloak of iridescent feathers there, a gown designed for a centaur over in the corner - but, for the most part, it was a surprising and welcome breath of normality in a city that managed to beat Nerima in the crazy department.

"Here you are, ladies; if you need anything, I'll be right here to assist," Loodra assured them, dramatically sweeping her arm to indicate the many racks of clothing.

"Thank you, Miss Loodra," Shampoo chirped, already approaching the nearest rack with an intrigued look in her eye.

"Yes, thank you, miss. We really appreciate it," Nabiki added, with Ukyo nodding her agreement before the two Japanese teens joined their Chinese counterpart in one of the favorite pastimes of any modern teenage girl: clothes shopping!

Shuffling through the hanging racks, Ukyo immediately went for anything that was meant to be worn with trousers. It wasn't so much that she hated dresses as... well, she didn't want to be wearing dresses in the streets of Sigil, not given the muck she had been stepping in yesterday. To her delight, apparently, Sigil had heard of things like women's pants, and she quickly pulled out a matching top and bottom pair. "Ooh, I love this one!" she chirped happily, holding it against herself to see how it might fit. "Hmm... but I'm not so sure about this color... you have this in red?" she asked Loodra.

The bestial shopkeep smiled happily and snapped her fingers. The lime-green of Ukyo's chosen clothes shifted to a beautiful scarlet red before her eyes, and Ukyo's jaw dropped in shock. "You're a wizard?!" she blurted.

At that, Loodra laughed a deep belly laugh. "Gracious, no, darling - nothing so extravagant as that! I merely know a few helpful tricks, that's all," she assured Ukyo, grinning all the while.

"Do those tricks let you adjust the size on this one?" Nabiki interjected, hopefulness tinging her words despite her efforts to play it cool as she presented a dress to the cow-woman.

"Don't you think dresses are a bad idea? I mean, the streets here aren't exactly the driest... or the cleanest," Ukyo interjected.

"Well, we're not going to be outdoors all the time; surely there's going to be a time and a place where we can wear dresses," Nabiki calmly fired back, before turning her attention to Loodra once more. "So, can you make this a little bigger, please?"

Loodra smiled and lazily twirled a now-glowing index finger in a few gentle arcs, leaving a sparkler-like trail through the air as she did. The dress in Nabiki's hands pulsed, and her eyes sparkled with glee as it gained about two sizes. "Thank you, Miss Loodra!" she chirped, holding her prize up to the light to examine it better.

'_Now that's service! ...Why couldn't magic ever do anything this useful back home?' _she wondered.

Ukyo watched Nabiki's little moment of triumph, and felt jealous. '_Everybody else gets to wear dresses, but not me... wait a sec, we're not in Nerima anymore. Those idiots from back home aren't here. The Ryltars gave us plenty of money for clothes shopping - I can buy myself a dress if I want one!'_

She turned and began combing through the dresses, unaware that Nabiki, having waited for her to turn away, was currently doing the same with the pants and tops.

The two Japanese girls moved swiftly through the store's racks, accumulating several outfits apiece, before the same thought struck them both.

"Where's Shampoo?" they simultaneously asked each other.

Laughter suddenly filled the air, emanating from a corner of the store they couldn't see. "Nabiki! Ukyo! C-come look see!" Shampoo shouted to them through her giggles.

Nabiki and Ukyo shared a mutual glance of concern, then headed towards the hysterical Amazon. "You okay, Shampoo? What's wrong?" Ukyo asked, having taken the lead instinctively in case of the remote possibility that this was some Chinese Amazon trick... then again, she had to admit, she couldn't think of any devious plans that started with Shampoo laughing her head off.

The grinning, giggling Joketsuzoku greeting her just made Ukyo feel more like a paranoid fool. "Look at this one!" she tittered. "Is too-too funny!"

"What's got you so... oh, my..." Nabiki trailed off as she took in what Shampoo was holding.

"An... armor... bikini?" Ukyo murmured, mostly to herself as she stared at it.

In fairness, it was a pretty accurate summation of what Shampoo was holding. In general shape, it resembled one of the more scandalous bikinis; two upwards-facing pyramids meant to be worn over the breasts, and a pair of downwards-facing pyramids meant to cover the crotch and buttock cleft. But each pyramid was made of coin-like steel disks, all wired together.

"That's our Red Sonja Special, the latest from Frazetta Fashions," Loodra commented, her sudden interjection startling the three girls, who hadn't heard her coming up behind them.

"Who buy something like this? Is too-too bad armor!" Shampoo pointed out.

"True, it's not gloryborn armor," the bovine proprietor admitted, nodding her head. "But that doesn't mean they can't be useful. You'd be surprised how many boys - and girls - like to see Frazetta's work in the bedroom. I guarantee it can help make a fun night," she added, smiling fondly at some distant memory.

Those words had Shampoo giving the scale-mail bikini another look. "Hmm... you think airen like see Shampool in this?" she mused aloud.

"Pft. Probably scare him all the way back to the Ryltars','' Ukyo scoffed, folding her arms over her chest.

"Show what Ukyo know; Ranma see Shampoo in far less, and no run then!" Shampoo spat. "Beside, not Shampoo fault Ukyo no could hope to fill this out..."

"You take that **back**!" an indignant Ukyo roared, whipping her battle spatula from its customary place on her back and holding its edge up towards Shampoo. The Chinese Amazon responded by whipping out one of her chui with her free hand, holding it in the same threatening posture and aimed right at Ukyo.

"Whoa, whoa, time out, ladies! This isn't Nerima!" Nabiki hastily interjected, trying to stop the disaster before it passed. "You're both pretty! You just aren't as shamelessly bold as Shampoo is, that's all, Ukyo."

"Ya got that right," Ukyo sniffed, without breaking the eye-lock she had with Shampoo. But, to Nabiki's relief, the two of them both relaxed and stowed their weapons away.

"Shampoo sorry... Nabiki is right; Ukyo is pretty girl, too. Really, is only Nabiki who no could fit into Red Sonja," the Joketsuzoku declared.

"_Excuse me?"_ an affronted Nabiki icily asked.

"Heh, no kidding," Ukyo giggled. "Sorry, Nabiki, but the idea of you wearing that getup? It's ridiculous!"

It said something about just how much recent events had pulled Nabiki out of her comfort zone that she actually rose to the provocation. "I'll have you know that I could not only pull that getup off, I'd look fabulous in it!"

Now it was Shampoo's turn to scoff. "Shampoo pay to see that."

"Oh, yeah?" Nabiki leered, greed now mingling with wounded pride and igniting into an all-consuming fire. "You want to make it a bet?"

Ordinarily, those words from her lips would have set alarm bells ringing in the minds of Ukyo and Shampoo alike. But she couldn't have picked a better time to prey upon their respective senses of pride, and the two nodded as one...

Meanwhile, downstairs, Ranma sighed and tapped his foot against the floor. "Why do girls always seem to take so long to pick out clothes?" he lamented to nobody in particular, double-checking his own pile of gear.

Whilst one could accuse Ranma of being able to get his new clothes sorted so quickly because he had no fashion sense, that would be inaccurate, as anyone who had seen Ranma's personal wardrobe of female clothing could tell you. In fact, Ranma actually had quite a natural knack for fashion... he just didn't _care _what was fashionable. Even his female outfits were selected so carefully only because they had a purpose: weapons in his assaults on the minds of male victims. So long as it did the job it was supposed to do, Ranma deemed clothes satisfying, as a general rule of thumb.

...Which didn't make waiting around for the rest of his... well, he guessed he'd call them '"friends", for lack of any better terminology, to join him and pay. He sighed again, staring at the ceiling and contemplating the mysteries of the teen female shopper. He was distracted from this reverie as Shampoo's voice suddenly came from behind him.

"Airen? Shampoo find too-too cute outfit; what you think?"

Ranma bit back a grumble of irritation. He could never really stay mad at anyone, least of all a girl, but Shampoo's obvious efforts to try and get back into his good books after causing this whole mess were really not helping her cause. He turned to face her all the same, prepared to offer a carefully neutral comment that, hopefully, wouldn't be taken as encouraging her pursuit of him... only for the words to tumble away like leaves in a rushing stream as the wide-eyed youth beheld Shampoo's "cute outfit".

The Chinese Amazon giggled at Ranma's shocked expression. "Airen like what he see?" she cooed, striking a pose that showed off the best possible view of her ample assets.

Ranma didn't reply. He couldn't, what with the way his tongue had seemingly glued itself to his mouth. In retrospect, he would argue that the sight of her shouldn't have been so shocking. After all, Shampoo had returned into his life after he first thought her gone by ambushing him in the bathroom, resulting in Ranma having a very up and close and personal encounter with a naked Joketsuzoku girl. Then they'd wound up naked together in Kuno's bathtub during that whole mess with the Japanese Nanniichuan. As for Shampoo dressing up, why, there had been that time on the beach with the love pills, and the mess with Ryoga stealing Shampoo's waterproof soap. So, really, he was quite used to Shampoo's lack of shame compared to, well, Akane Tendo.

...And yet, somehow, that still failed to adequately prepare Ranma for the sight of Shampoo in a glorified bikini made of metallic scales. Perhaps it was the way that the triangular arrangement of disks feigned modesty whilst completely failing to provide it, leaving Shampoo's full breasts and round, perky buttocks on proud display. Maybe it was that tiny bit of modesty that, perversely, made the difference; the obscurement of Shampoo's nipples and most secret place when so much more of her pale, moon-kissed skin was on display merely enflamed the imagination with picturing what lay beneath.

Whatever the reason, Ranma found himself staring like a deer caught in the headlights... before he remembered that Shampoo wasn't the only one of his fiancées who had made the trip to this strange city, and well-honed instincts kicked in. He flung his hands up in a desperate warding gesture, averted his eyes, and started backing away from Shampoo as quickly as he possibly could without openly running from her.

"Shampoo! I-I didn't, you can't, where did you? How? I can't!"

"...Ranchan?"

Ranma visibly shivered as the soft, questioning voice of Ukyo pierced his panicked babbling. Anger and resentment, he was used to, but he couldn't remember the last time he'd heard Ukyo sound like that when another fiancée was doing something so brazen around him. "Ucchan, I swear, it's not-!" he protested, spinning around to face her... only for shock to steal the words away before he even finished the sentence.

Ukyo blushed, the crimson visible all the way down her neck as she put her hands behind her back and gave Ranma an embarrassed yet hopeful look. "So, Ranchan? D-do I look good?" she asked quietly, a pleading expression on her face as she waited for Ranma's reply.

Ranma just stared back at her, dumbstruck by what he was seeing. It had been hard enough to process at first the one time he'd seen Ukyo dressed up in women's clothing, and this was a pretty far remove from a simple dress! The top may not have strained to contain the full bounty of her bosom as it had done with her rival, nor did the bottom frame as wide a pair of hips, but there was only one conclusion that could be drawn from the overall picture.

"...Definitely not a boy..." Ranma breathed. Then he cursed as Ukyo's face lit up with a peculiar mixture of embarrassment and joy, and he ran for it, self-preservation drowning out all concerns about his reputation.

"Nabiki! Nabiki! Where are you?!" Ranma pleaded, racing up and down through the racks of clothing in desperate search for his new Tendo fiancée.

"I'm over here, Ranma," she called back, and Ranma immediately darted in her direction like a drowning man seizing onto a thrown rope.

"Oh, man, this is a disaster! Shampoo and Ucchan both found this weird outfit and now they're dressed like pin-up girls and they're going to tear this place apart and-and-and..."

Nabiki giggled, a sound that Ranma had never heard before and which chilled him to his very soul. "Go on, Ranma; you were saying?" she asked, the sweetly innocent tone of her question belying the wicked grin on her face as she nonchalantly stretched. This act did some _very _interesting things to parts of her that Ranma normally quite comfortably pretended didn't exist, a luxury that her new golden version of the same outfit as Shampoo and Ukyo didn't afford him.

It wasn't as if he'd ever thought that Nabiki was unattractive. Abstractly, he'd always known that Akane's sisters were lookers, even if he'd never have dared admit it - that was a luxury that a guy with three jealous fiancées (and one psycho would-be girlfriend) didn't have. Still, he'd have had to have been blind to not notice Nabiki's features, or the way her clothes tended to hug her figure, or even her love of short shorts that showed off her long, slender legs. But the "clothing" (if one was generous) she was wearing? Well, that was almost literally thrusting Nabiki's womanhood in Ranma's face!

'_...Wow, she's got a bigger rack than I thought...'_ a tiny voice mused in the corner of Ranma's mind, much to Ranma's horror as he realized what he'd just thought.

Still smiling that horrible, beautiful, cat-like grin, Nabiki sashayed towards Ranma. "So, Ranma? Do you think I'm cute?" she asked sweetly.

That was the last straw and Ranma's mind finally gave up and threw in the towel. Faced with such a shattering of his reality paradigm, Ranma did the only sensible thing he could do, and fainted; he was unconscious before he hit the floor.

"R-Ranma?!" Nabiki yelped as her unwanted fiancé keeled over backwards. '_Oh, crap; if he's dead, those girls will kill me!'_

"Nabiki? What going - what happened to Airen?!" Shampoo shrieked, pelting down the makeshift corridor to attend to her stricken suitor.

"What happened, Nabiki?!" Ukyo demanded, turning flashing eyes on the Tendo girl responsible for all this.

"I don't know! He just fell over! Is he dead?" Nabiki replied, directing this last question at Shampoo.

The Chinese Amazon deftly laid a finger against the side of Ranma's neck, feeling for a pulse, and then visibly slumped in relief. "Airen okay! He just fainted... how that happen?"

"Guess he got a little worked up by what he saw?" Ukyo suggested, a small and slightly hysterical giggle escaping her at the prospect.

"...You mean airen get so turned on, he faint to deal with it?" A bemused Shampoo asked, looking quizzically at Ukyo. When her crossdressing rival nodded, Shampoo smirked smugly. "Have to work on that, then. No fun if husband faint when it time for nookie."

"I hate to burst your bubbles," Nabiki interjected. '_Actually, I don't; last thing we need is for you two to get distracted by fixating on fighting over Ranma again.'_ "But he probably fainted more from fear than arousal."

"Fear?" an incredulous Ukyo repeated. "Why in the world would Ranchan be scared of us?"

Shampoo nodded her agreement with the sentiment, looking rather put out by the suggestion.

"Gee, I don't know... it isn't as if the two of you don't have a habit of getting violent with him when there are other women around, and especially not when those other women are flirting," Nabiki dryly retorted.

The two girls looked confused for a moment, then visibly thought it over before blushing in mutual embarrassment.

"I... never thought about it like that," Ukyo confessed.

"Great... Shampoo lose again..." the Joketsuzoku muttered bitterly. "Shampoo so sick of always being two steps behind..."

Nabiki watched the glum expressions on their faces for a few moments. '_Should I do this...? Yes, I think this is a gamble that could pay off...'_

"It's not entirely hopeless," she quietly commented. "Ranma's not exactly the grudge-holding type... well, at least when it comes to pretty girls. If the two of you can knock it off with trying to punch each other senseless when you think he's looking at somebody other than you? He might just start to realize your good sides."

"...You really think so?" Shampoo asked tentatively, visibly brightening as hope dawned on her features.

Ukyo likewise directed a hurt-yet-hopeful look at Nabiki, waiting for her answer.

"It certainly can't hurt to try," Nabiki replied, carefully hedging her language. "But it would probably help to change back; I think we'll call this bet a draw, and it certainly won't do us much good if Ranma faints every time he looks at us."

"Yeah, you're right, Nabiki..." Ukyo admitted. Then she blushed and smiled. "Did you see the look on his face when he saw us, though? I've never gotten a reaction out of Ranchan like that before!"

"Shampoo know; like deer caught in headlights!" the Joketsuzoku giggled. "Honestly, that too-too big relief; Shampoo always worry Ranma's curse mean he not able to react to women. Is sooo good to see Shampoo wrong!"

With that, the two rivals swept off back to the upstairs changing rooms where their clothes lay waiting. Nabiki lingered to make sure they couldn't see her rolling her eyes at their antics. '_Seriously; those two act almost like sisters sometimes. Ranma's sure got his hands full with that pair. Still, if they take my words to heart, there's less chance they might see me as a rival and take my head off.'_

She glanced over at Ranma, still lying prone on the floor. '_Funny how you didn't faint until you saw me, Saotome. If I didn't know better, I'd actually think you might have liked what you saw... nah, couldn't be. You're in love with my sister, though kami know that she seems intent on squandering those feelings. If only the two of you could have just spit it out already! If you aren't tempted to stray for the likes of Ukyo and Shampoo, there's no way you'd be interested in me...'_

Despite her logical denials, Nabiki couldn't fight back the treacherous hint of pride at the idea that maybe Ranma had seen her as attractive, if only for a moment. After all, even if she wasn't interested in him herself, she had to admit, he was easy on the eyes... and kind of sweet when he wanted to be...

She mentally slapped herself, shaking her head. '_Where the hell did that thought come from?! Get it together, girl; you're going to get back to Nerima, and Akane's going to be so worried about Ranma that she might finally take the stick out and admit it, and then you're going to give him back and everything's going to get back to normal!'_

Confidence reaffirmed, she followed her fellow females back up to the second floor. As she made her way up the stairs, Loodra emerged from behind the racks of clothes and bent over Ranma. "Are you awake, dear?"

"Are they gone?" Ranma quietly asked in response.

The cow-woman chuckled warmly. "Yes, dear; they've all gone back upstairs to change back. You can get up now."

Ranma's eyes sprang open and he lifted his legs straight into the air, rolling back onto his outflung arms before using them like springs to propel himself into the air and onto his feet. "Thank goodness... that was a close one."

"I sense there's a story behind that reaction... not many boys would faint at having three lovely ladies flaunting the Red Sonja Special," Loodra noted.

"It's complicated," Ranma replied. '_Gotta admit... I didn't expect them to sound so sad about the idea that they scare me - I mean, not that they do scare me! But...they genuinely seemed upset about it. Dammit, why do girls have to be so complicated?'_

Fortunately for Ranma's sanity, the girls swiftly reappeared, now clad once more in their original clothing and carrying bundles that, at a glance, did not include the scalemail bikinis that had left Ranma comatose. It took Ranma but a moment to gather his own bundle, and that of course meant it was time to pay the piper. Well, the tailor.

"Thirteen gold pieces?" Nabiki protested.

"You won't find better prices than that here in Sigil," Loodra relied calmly, still smiling sweetly.

"Just pay up, Nabiki; we got a pretty good deal here, and honestly, I kind of expected it to be more than that," Ranma interjected.

Nabiki's face twisted as if she'd just bitten into a lemon, but then she sighed and nodded. She took out the precious bag and painstakingly counted out nearly three quarters of the money their hosts had given them, dropping the coins into Loodra's palm with a musical tinkling. She nearly dropped the bag in surprise when Ranma suddenly gently lobbed the other bag he had taken from their reluctant guide in her direction, before she instinctively snatched it from the air. "What the?" she asked, directing a quizzical stare at the only male member of their group.

"Go and give that back to Molly, and pay her that gold piece we promised her. Ucchan, Shampoo and I will just put these away, and then we'll catch up to you," he told her.

Nabiki rolled her eyes at the thought of giving away yet more precious money, especially to somebody who had tried to steal from her when they first met... but, she couldn't deny that the little thief had come through on her part, and so she headed to the door. To her surprise, however, the halfling was nowhere to be seen, even given the ever-moving tide of bodies in the street.

"Molly? Molly, where are you?" Nabiki called out, stepping out of the door to get a better view.

"Over here, tallfolk," came an answering cry, with the shifting crowd revealing the halfling pickpocket to be standing in an alley just across the street. She beckoned to Nabiki, and without a thought, the middle Tendo daughter crossed the street.

"You kept your word in bringing us here, so Ranma sent me to pay you like we promised," Nabiki explained, dropping the bag of copper and silver pieces into the halfling's outstretched hands.

"How generous..." Molly drawled. "But we've decided to renegotiate! Now!"

A quartet of figures lurched from the darkness of the alley, none taller than Molly herself. Still, that was little comfort to the decidedly non-combatant Nabiki, who immediately lurched backwards, two words she never would have countenanced saying spilling from her lips without thought.

"Ranma! Help!"

"Ala-peanut-butter-sandwiches!" came an answering shout, as one green figure jabbed a black and white stick at her.

"Wait, **what**?!" Nabiki blurted, the sheer absurdity of what she had just heard stunning her into immobility. That was before a scintillating beam of green light leapt from her assailant's outstretched...whatever it was, and struck Nabiki squarely in the face. In that instant, fatigue washed over her, reminding Nabiki of those hated days when school forced her to run laps with the other girls, only turned up to eleven.

Her whole body felt lifeless, like a dishrag wrung clean, her aching muscles refusing to obey her frantic commands to carry her now heavy-as-lead body to safety. Instead, she pitched forward and collapsed face-first onto the pavement, her jawline protesting the abuse, but unable to fight her way upright again.

Molly threw back her head and laughed. "Another tallfolk cut down to size!"

"Hey! Whaddya think yer doing?!"

Ranma sprinted through the crowded streets, unceremoniously weaving around or shoving aside anyone stupid enough to get in his way, and launched himself at a flying kick at the treacherous halfling street thief. Unfortunately, whether because he'd been delayed just enough or because Molly was quicker than he'd anticipated, she managed to dive under his attack, causing him to sail harmlessly overhead before skidding to a stop against the gritty street.

"Hahah! Tallfolk fools! Taste the wrath of the Underdogs! Get him!" Molly cried, shooting up from her faceplant into the dust and gesturing grandly at Ranma.

It was at that point that Ranma became aware that he was surrounded by half a dozen motley figures, including Molly herself, none of them taller than the halfling. A green-skinned, feral-looking male in a matching if tattered tailed suit and pants, a blue-skinned female with glowing orange eyes in a ragged hood clutching a set of pipes, a near-naked green female with mismatched eyes and sporting a pair of iron knuckles, the world's tiniest gray male bodybuilder, and a...bedraggled half raccoon, half-monkey thing with a thick leather collar around her neck who really looked like she'd rather be anywhere else.

He only had the briefest of moments to take that in, before the blue woman lifted the crudely fashioned pipes to her lips and began to play them. Ranma tensed, but felt no impulse to began dancing, so obviously it wasn't a repeat of Ling-ling and Lung-lung's stupid Dance of Great Fire Dragon technique. Thus emboldened, he smirked at the piper. "That's a cute tune and all, but you're hardly playing me into submission here."

And that was when he suddenly found himself covered in rats.

"Aaagh! Gettem offa me! Gettem offa me! Ouch! No bitey! Stop! Help!" Ranma cried out, twisting and flailing as he bounced around like a tennis ball in a desperate attempt to free himself from his unwanted rodent overcoat. Which responded by sinking their teeth into his skin to hang on for dear life.

'_My hero...'_ Nabiki sarcastically applauded. She would have said it aloud if only she could get her tongue to work...

"Hang on, Ranchan!" Ukyo shouted as she raced into the alley, brandishing her spatula and making Molly leap out of its reach.

"We come for you, airen! Take that, nasty blue thing!" Shampoo cried out as she landed in front of the piper and delivered a punishing kick to the little blue woman's chest, sending her flying down the length of the alley until she smacked into the wall at the far end... and then punched straight through it. Shampoo had the graciousness to blush at that. "Oops. Sorry... stupid cheap walls..."

"You can't do that to Brianna! Big bully!" shrieked the mad-eyed, green-skinned female. Then she roared, her whole body quaking as she swelled up, muscles bloating into being like a scene from that new shonen anime Shampoo liked to watch when she had the TV to herself, growing and growing until she towered over the Jokestuzoku. She cracked her knuckles and grinned a broken-tusked grin. "Any last words before I beat your ass?"

"...Auntie Lotion? What you doing here?" Shampoo asked, staring up wide-eyed at her new challenger.

The whole alley froze at that non sequitur, with even Ranma stopping mid-rat-hurling to stare at Shampoo.

"I ain't your auntie!" the hulking she-thing snarled.

"Oh, good. Then Shampoo no feel guilty about this!" the Joketsuzoku cried, before she hit the newly gigantified goblin woman in the jaw with an uppercut that lifted her oversized assailant clean off of her feet and laid her out unconscious before she hit the floor.

Ukyo, meanwhile, was battering away at the gray-skinned muscle-bound goblinoid, which merely returned a series of dull metallic clanging for her efforts. The creature grinned, showing off disproportionately large fangs. "Silly wench, you can't hurt me! My skin is hard as stone!"

Ukyo simply looked at the little braggart, and then lunged forward in a powerful kick. Everybody else winced collectively as she drove her foot into the fork of her assailant's trousers with an audible crunch. The little gray man's eyes went wide in horror, and he squeaked miserably before slowly falling over backwards, clutching himself.

"Serves you right for trying to kidnap a lady," Ukyo sniffed disdainfully.

"And that just leaves three," Ranma concluded, glaring at Molly and cracking his knuckles, his two fiancées closing ranks with him as they advanced on the three remaining members of the gang.

The little green man blanched as white as mushy pea soup, and hastily began waving his stick in the air, tracing a complicated pattern. "Abraca-pocus!" he shouted, and then the world lit up in a searing, eye-burning brilliance that had all three Neriman teens covering their eyes and cursing in pain. When they could finally blink the tears from their watering eyes and see again, only Molly and the raccoon-monkey remained, the little green man having almost reached the opposite end of the alley.

"Mumfred, you miserable coward!" the halfling thief shrieked in fury.

"Better a live coward than a dead hero!" was the answer he shot back before he rounded a corner and disappeared.

Molly ground her teeth and snarled like an animal. "You are dead, Mumfred! You hear me?! When I find you, you're gonna be **ratshit**!" she screamed.

"And you! Miserable tallfolk bastards! Don't think you've won yet!"

Feral, inhuman sounds clawed their way out of the halfling's throat as she trembled like somebody having a fit. Thick bristly black fur began to sprout across her body as her face tore open, jaws distending with massive, chisel-like fangs and bones visibly growing into the shape of a rodent-like muzzle. Her fingernails stretched and cracked into long, black, splintery talons, and a giant rat's tail slipped through a previously hidden hole in the back of her pants, whipping through the air with an audible crack. Blood-red eyes gleamed at the three teens as the newly transmogrified rat-woman squealed in what was evidently supposed to be the murine equivalent of a ferocious roar. All in all, she was quite an intimidating figure... so long as you ignored the fact that she was still barely four feet tall.

"...Huh. That's new. Do all halflings do that, Ucchan?" Ranma casually asked his old friend turned would-be wife.

"Heeheheheheee! Cower, tallfolk, for I'll soon be sucking the marrow from your gnawed bones!" squeaked the half-rat halfling.

"I hate werebeasts!" Ukyo suddenly screamed, lunging forward and crushing the startled Molly under the flat of her mighty spatula with a resounding **CLANG**, much to the shock of her companions.

"Uhh... tallfolk fool! I can't be stopped by that!" Molly boasted, pushing herself upright again.

There was another mighty **CLANG **as Ukyo squashed her flat yet again.

"Stop that!" Molly squeaked angrily.

**CLANG**

"I'm warning you!"

**CLANG**

"Stoppit!"

**CLANG CLANG**

"I surrender..."

**CLANG CLANG CLANG**

"...Mommy?"

**CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG...**

Once the frenzied hammering was over and Ukyo was panting with exhaustion, Ranma cautiously stepped forward, one eye on his fiancée, the other on the sizable crater in which a remarkably intact, but unconscious (or at least smart enough to fake being so) halfling-rat now lay. "I think you got her, Ucchan..."

Ukyo wiped her brow with one forearm and blew out a disgusted puff of air. "Hardly. Werebeasts are all but impossible to kill without silver. But she'll think twice before fighting us again. C'mon, let's grab Nabiki and go."

"Shampoo get her!" the Joketsuzoku promptly volunteered, stepping over and shaking Nabiki's shoulder. "Nabiki get up now; fighting all done, is no time for cowering no more."

Slowly, Nabiki rolled her head around to face Shampoo and gave the Chinese Amazon the flattest, most cutting look in her arsenal. "M' not cowering, m' paralayzed," she mumbled as clearly as she could when her tongue felt like the inside of a well-used boot.

"Huh. Shampoo did think it odd that Nabiki just lie on ground like lump. No matter, Shampoo fix!" And with that Shampoo scooped up the still-limp form of Ranma's current Tendo fiancée in a bridal-style carry before anyone could stop her.

Ranma cast a wary look at the two of them, but Shampoo simply smiled brightly back. "Okay... so, we beat the bad guys-"

"Wait, where's that monkey-thing?" Ukyo interjected, remembering that there had been a sixth gang member.

"It up there. Not look like it want to fight," Shampoo replied, pointing at a nearby chimney. Sure enough, the raccoon-monkey was curled defensively around the smoke outlet, watching them all with sad eyes.

"Counts as a win in my book. Anyway, we won, we got out shopping... so, what, we just go back to the Ryltars' place now?" Ranma asked.

"Well, we can't just drag Nabiki all over town in her condition," Ukyo observed.

"Paralysis not permanent. Maybe just find place to rest? Get some food?" Shampoo suggested.

"Huh... well, a place like this should have taverns, and I'm pretty hungry. I don't think there's any harm in going to one first and seeing if Nabiki gets better," Ranma concluded.

"Makes sense to me," Ukyo agreed.

Stopping only to rob the two bandits whose unconscious bodies were right there in the alley with them, the quartet headed back out into the streets of the Market District. Finding the nearest tavern wasn't hard; it was just a simple matter of asking. After about ten minutes of pushing their way through the crowds, they found themselves standing before a two-storey building with a sign hanging over the front door; a grinning skull made of clockwork and metal. What might have once been a window had been filled in with some wooden boards, on which had been painted a few words in garishly red paint.

"No fiends, Blood War veterans drink half price... this must be the Chattering Mimir, then," Ranma noted.

"Then let's go already; I'm starving," Nabiki insisted from her perch in Shampoo's arms. As they had walked, she had found the worst of the numbing, muscle-cramping tiredness ebbing from her body, but it had left her with a ravenous appetite, as if she hadn't eaten since last night.

The other three from Nerima rolled their eyes, but Ranma pushed the door open, and led them all through.

The interior of the Chattering Mimir was dark and smokey, with light coming from candles hanging high above and scattered across the ceiling like stars, and a roaring fire on which haunches and joints of various beasts roasted on great spit, filling the air with a sizzling salty grilled meat scent that made four sets of teenage stomachs grumble in anticipation. The clientele was a motley mixture of races, united by three things; scars, armor (often spiked), and haunted looks. The place was surprisingly quiet, without the lively chattering and antics that any of the Nerimans would have anticipated for such a place; the customers seemed far more interested in nursing their drinks and staring into the hazy shadows than interacting with each other.

Undaunted by this coolly indifferent reception, the quartet sauntered up to the central bar. There, they found the oddest-looking creature they'd seen in Sigil so far; a great metal box, carried on two spindly clockwork legs and with four clockwork arms protruding from its cubical frame. One vertical face was taken up with an abstractly human-like flesh, seemingly little more than a segmented mask of verdigrised bronze over more underlying clockwork. Its thin, lipless mouth twisted into an artificial smile, heavy eyelids clicking as they slid over faceted glass eyes in a facade of blinking as they approached.

"Salutations! Being welcomed to this place, the Chattering Mimir! How may Nordom be assisting you in this time and place?" it asked, its voice possessing a metallic warbling quality that only strengthened the obvious fact of its mechanical nature.

"...What are you?" Ranma blurted out, his surprise at this mechanical monster - a robot? - in a city so defined by sorcery and spellcasting overwhelming his manners.

"Nordom is being Nordom. Nordom equals backwards modron equals Nordom," it chirped, completely unphased.

"Modron? I've never heard of them," Ukyo added.

"Explanation: Modrons are being planar entities, constructs from the fortress slash world slash entity that is Mechanus, which is located within the Accordant Expanse. Modrons are being manifestations of order in a chaotic multiverse. Modrons are being **one**," Nordom replied. "This unit was once **one**. But is now being a smaller, louder _one_. Nordom equals backwards Modron. Backwards modron equals synonym equals rogue modron. Has clarification been achieved?"

"Y-yes, that explains everything," Ranma quickly replied. Actually, it still sounded as clear as mud to him, but obviously this... 'Nordom' would chatter on for ages if given the right provocation.

"Return to original query: do you desire nourishment and slash or intoxication?" Nordom asked, still smiling that rather creepy artificial smile.

Before Ranma could reply, the door behind them suddenly slammed open. Two monstrous beasts - eyeless lizard-hound things with lamprey-like mouths and whp-like tongues - pattered through, panting harshly and lashing the air with their tongues. Just behind them came what was obviously their master; a towering brute that looked like a humanoid dog covered in chitinous armor, with massive pincered arms and a smaller pair of human-like arms protruding from its stomach. Its horns nearly scraped the ceiling as its blazing golden eyes scanned the room, its nostrils flaring.

"Valenae Mistcourt! Deserter! I've come for you!" it snarled, brandishing one crab-like pincer with menace.

A woman leapt up from her table, visibly trembling in fear. She was an elf-maid, with ash-gray skin and silver hair, her once-lovely features mangled by three wicked scars that nearly split her face in half. Pearly, opalescent eyes of solid sea-green bulged in sheer terror as she stared at the monstrous newcomer.

"N-no! No! NO! I won't go back! I won't!" she screamed. She shivered violently, as if freezing to death, and her whole body became misty and translucent... before she suddenly snapped back to her former solidness with an electric crackle, looking even more panic-stricken than before.

"Help-help me! Please help me!" she pleaded, looking desperately around the tavern.

None of the other customers met her eye. Instead, they deliberately turned their backs on her, hunching over their drinks and visibly trying to avoid getting involved.

All of them... except for one...

"Hey! Leave the lady alone, ya jerk!" Ranma spat, having leapt from the bar to position himself in front of the towering monster.

"You have to be the hero now?!" Nabiki protested, but found herself ignored and left to her own seat as Shampoo and Ukyo immediately flanked their fiancé.

"Look, I don't know what you want with her," Ranma began, but found himself cut off in mid-sentence as the dog-thing snarled and then suddenly lunged forward, one massive pincer scything towards Ranma's neck with such speed even Ranma found himself hard-pressed to dodge. He ducked beneath the arm, then hopped to the side as the second claw came down in a vertical strike that would have bisected him. "Oh, so we're just skipping right to this part, eh? Fine by me!"

The monstrous hound things snarled, a sound like steel scraping on steel, and would have pounced on Ranma, had they not instead been pounced on by Ranma's warrior-fiancées.

"Oh no you don't!" Shampoo cried, smashing one away with a dual-chui strike.

"Fair's fair, pooch!" Ukyo agreed, clobbering hers over the head with her spatula.

As helpful as that unexpected intervention was in keeping the fight one on one, Ranma was realizing something...

'_I might have bitten off more than I can chew...' _that traitorous little voice inside his head mused, even as Ranma dodged, ducked and wove around incoming strikes from his monstrous opponent. '_Seriously, how does something so big move so fast? This is like fighting two Ryogas!'_

Spotting an opening, Ranma lunged forward and planted a full-force punch squarely into his opponent's midriff, the blow powerful enough that the displaced air rushed through the tavern in a breeze that ruffled Shampoo and Ukyo's hair.

'_Gotcha!'_ Ranma smirked in triumph, craning his neck to look the beast in the eye... only to realize that it was still standing. Blood seeped between its open fangs, a single bead of gore falling with comical precision right onto Ranma's forehead, but otherwise it seemed completely unphased. If anything, it just seemed pissed off.

Unfortunately for Ranma, that distracted him just long enough that he couldn't react in time when the creature grabbed him by the neck in one massive crab's claw, lifting him from the floor and level with the ceiling with all the effort of somebody picking up a pillow. It sneered at him and lazily drew back its other claw in what would obviously be a disemboweling strike.

'_...I'm in trouble...'_

And that was when the world exploded. A staccato cracking noise split the air, like a rolling thunderbolt that crashed and boomed repeatedly, two dozen roars in total. That would have been shocking enough, but the sight of pieces of Ranma's assailant's head flying away in sprays of gore were the true captivator. In less time than it took Ranma to process it, the monster's head was shattered into pulp by what even Ranma could barely make out as flying bullets. When the noise stopped, there was only a gushing, ragged stump where the creature's head had been. Its claw opened up, dropping Ranma to the floor as it fell backwards, dissolving even as it fell into sickly green embers and onyx-black soot.

The hound-things whined and whimpered, before turning and fleeing out the door, leaving the three martial artists from Nerima free to look at their unlikely savior.

Nordom brandished four of the biggest, most baroque-looking revolvers that they had ever seen in its four hands, flicking out the cylinders and letting the bullet casings rattle to the floor in a single motion, before snapping them closed with another wrist-flick and then smoothly tucking them away into slots around its... well, midriff, for lack of a better word. Its lipless mouth was set in a flat horizontal line and its glass eyes were half-hooded, in an approximation of disdain. "The instructions are written clearly. No fiends."

"Demons never were the best at reading, gearbox," came a second voice. It said something about just how much Sigil was getting to them that none of the Nerimans even battered an eye when a disembodied skull floated through the air to hover in front of Ranma. A pair of glass eyes, glowing as if they held candle flames within them, added a much-needed semblance of humanity to the naked bone as it studied Ranma flatly. "That was brave, basher. Stupid, but brave." Weirdly, its voice was surprisingly human - far better than the metallic, almost robotic tones of Nordom.

"Yeah, well, I never have been too good when it comes to bullies," Ranma conceded, watching the skull and preparing himself for the inevitable attack - or at least a tongue lashing. He barely reacted to Shampoo and Ukyo falling in line with him.

"Never could stand the type myself. I'm Morte; I own this dump. And you are?"

"Ranma. Ranma Saotome... and I'm sorry about the mess," he added as an afterthought.

The skull chuckled, a surprisingly warm and hearty sound. "Ah, this? We've had worse than that on poetry recital nights. Never again will I hire bleakniks, I don't care how cheap they are! So, what brings you here to the Chattering Mimir? You just looking to pick a fight with a fiend?"

"Hardly," Ranma reassured him, slowly relaxing at the apparent lack of an incoming scolding. "We just wanted to dust ourselves off, maybe grab a bite to eat and something to drink. Then we gotta get back to job huntin'."

"Well, if it's bub you're craving, we can fix you up, no troubles! As for eats... well, all we got is what's on the spit," Morte professed cheerfully.

"...You mean the meat that's caught fire?" Ukyo cautiously interjected.

Ranma blinked, and Morte's eyelights flickered in what was apparently his equivalent of a blink, before they both turned to the spit. As it turned, the smell of burning meat was not coming from the ashen heap of ex-demon, but from the joints on the spit, which had evidently caught fire whilst unattended.

Morte's jaw dropped and his eyes popped out of their sockets, with Ranma instinctively catching them before they could hit the floor. "Aagh! Nordom! You addlepated gearbrained box! I told you to watch that meat!"

"Error! Nordom has been observing the steadily combusting portions of flesh as instructed this whole time!"

"Then why are they **on fire**?!" Morte bellowed, with impressive volume for somebody without lungs.

"That is what happens when meat is allowed to sit at sufficiently high temperatures for sufficient periods of time," Nordom replied emotionlessly.

Morte began to curse, spewing profanities with a vernacular that left even Ranma, long an informal student of the art of swearing, impressed. For all the emotional impact it had on Nordom, he might as well have pouring water on a duck's back.

"Shampoo fix!" Shampoo blurted out, already sprinting for the spits.

Morte stopped in mid-profanity, spinning to face her. "Just what good are you gonna do?!" he complained, only to stop and stare in open-mouthed shock as Shampoo grabbed the spits and pulled them from their slots over the fireplace, hefting what had to be at least her own body weight in spitted meat into the air with what seemed like no effort at all.

"W-where Shampoo put these? They hot!" the Chinese Amazon asked, trying not to let molten fat and boiling blood drip over herself.

Morte snapped his jaw back into place with an audible click and shook himself. "On the bench will do!"

With no further encouragement needed, Shampoo sprinted across the floor and all but slammed the spits onto the bar, releasing the handles and stepping away as she shook her hands, visibly wincing.

"H-hey, Shampoo? Are you okay?" Ranma asked, finally finding his voice after managing to put together what must have happened.

Shampoo turned and gave Ranma rather feeble smile. "Shampoo okay. Great-grandmother train Shampoo to handle heat! Just... bit more heat than Shampoo expecting."

"...Wouldn't those metal spits be red hot after so long next to an open fire?" Nabiki asked, pointedly staring at Shampoo's hands.

Shampoo flushed and tucked them away from sight. "Shampoo tell you, Shampoo fine!"

"Oh no, you're not just playing the tough guy this time," Ranma said, and Shampoo jumped in shock; she hadn't even noticed Ranma and Ukyo approaching her! Before she could do anything else, Ranma had grabbed her wrist and gently but firmly pulled it into view. "Wow, that's red... you sure you're alright, Shampoo?"

Shampoo swallowed and tried not to get gooey at hearing Ranma talking to her with actual concern for once. "Shampoo okay, airen, really... push heat tolerance to limit, but Shampoo be fine. Not even blistering, see?"

"Alright... but why would you do something like that anyway?" Ranma demanded, letting Shampoo's hand go as he did.

"...Shampoo just want to show Ranma that Shampoo can be helpful, too. Shampoo more than just stupid brute who get us stranded here," the Chinese Amazon meekly admitted, eyes downcast and staring at her scalded red palms rather than look directly at Ranma, although she stole a glance at his face to see his reaction.

Whatever Ranma might have been expecting to hear, that obviously wasn't it. His shock and obvious guilt was like balm to Shampoo's soul after having come so close to potentially driving him away once and for all with this whole Sigil mess. Unfortunately, she didn't have long to savor it, as the sound of throat-clearing drew their attention back to Morte.

"Sorry for interrupting, but... you got something that belongs to me, kid," the talking skull quipped.

"Oh, yeah, sorry man," Ranma replied, hastily holding out the glass eyes to the skull.

"Y'mind sticking them back in there? I'd do it meself, only I'm a little short-handed at the moment," Morte cackled at his own lame joke.

Gingerly, Ranma reinserted the glass orbs into the hollows of Morte's eye sockets, absently noting that the glow in them came from tiny sparks of light that flickered in the sockets themselves.

"Ah, that's better! So, anyway, I guess we can't offer you anything to eat today..."

"Eh, I don't know, sugar...I might be able to salvage this..." Ukyo interjected, idly poking at the still-sizzling joints with one of her smaller spatulas.

"Eh? You can cook?" Morte asked, turning a quizzical gaze to the crossdresser.

"Ucchan and Shampoo are both excellent cooks!" Ranma replied, unable to resist boasting on their behalf. He didn't notice the two of them smiling at his words.

"Interesting... you can fight, and they can cook... tell me; what does she do?" Morte asked, bobbing in the air to "nod" towards Nabiki.

"Um...aside from looking pretty and being too smart for her own good? I'm not actually sure..." Ranma confessed, scratching his head.

"Gee, thanks for the compliment," Nabiki dryly quipped. She also firmly kicked the part of herself that felt a pang of surprise and happiness at hearing Ranma admit that she was pretty. '_Wasn't that scene in the clothes shop enough?'_ she mentally scolded herself.

"Never forget that looking pretty can be a valuable skill in its own right," Morte playfully chided Ranma. "You said you were looking for work earlier?"

"Yes?"

"Well, how about you work for me? This place is new; we could use a bouncer, cooks and waitresses. What do you say?" Morte asked, grinning a sharp-toothed grin. Literally, now that Ranma was in the mindset to notice such things.

"Depends, how much would you be willing to pay?" Nabiki asked, putting on her most predatory smile.

"A gold piece per day," Morte replied immediately.

"Each!" Nabiki interjected, holding up a finger for emphasis.

"Done!" Morte shot back, and cackled at Nabiki's visible surprise at how readily he'd agreed to paying what was effectively ten times the daily wage in Sigil for four people. "You cullies ready to trust me word, or do we need to put it in writing?"

As the haggling continued, and Shampoo & Ukyo began to dissect the scorched meat to salvage what they could, a feeling of hope washed over the four teens from Nerima. This was their first real step towards getting back on their feet; with a steady income, they could start looking towards finding their own place to live, and from there, working on a way to get back home.

It wasn't the most glamourous of beginnings... but at least it was a beginning.

* * *

**Chapter End & Closing Notes**

* * *

Finally! Man, you guys have been waiting for this for so long, and I can't begin to tell you how sorry I am for the delay; between real life issues and a killer case of writer's block, this was just such a hassle to get off the ground. Hopefully, things will be smoother in the future. And yes, the next Heated Storm chapter should be out soon, too.

As an aside... does anyone know how to use the author's gizmets on FFN to check how many reviews a story has on a chapter-by-chapter basis? I swear that's an option, but I can't for the life of me find it...


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